


I Had a Dream I Was Your Hero

by one_of_those_crushing_scenes



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Mockingbird (Comic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But they end on much better terms than in the original story, But they have a lot of crap to work through, Clint isn't a cheater okay, Clint/Bobbi are endgame, Depression, F/F, F/M, Fraction's Hawkeye, Gen, Hawkeye's Battle Staves, Minor Carol Danvers/Jessica Drew, No Characters Were Demonized in the Making of This Fic, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Temporary Bobbi Morse/Penny Wright, Temporary Clint Barton/Jessica Drew, Temporary Dominic Fortune/Bobbi Morse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2019-11-05 02:03:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17909888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_of_those_crushing_scenes/pseuds/one_of_those_crushing_scenes
Summary: Bobbi Morse, alias Mockingbird, has been one of the few unpowered superheroes for her entire career—until now. Recently upgraded with a mixture of the super soldier serum and the infinity formula, Bobbi's struggling to adjust to her new abilities and trying to figure out what to do with her new shot at life. It doesn't help that her (ex-?)landlord and his gang of mobsters are declaring war on her...A retelling of Fraction’s Hawkeye, if Fraction’s Hawkeye were written about Mockingbird.





	1. Luck Be a Lady

**Author's Note:**

> Diverges from canon right at the beginning of Hawkeye (2012).

“Bobbi,” someone says. “Can you hear me?”

Another voice. “That looks bad. We should get her to a hospital.”

“What’s the point? She’ll just...” the voice trails out as everything goes fuzzy and then black.

—

“This is the third time this month.”

Luke and Jessica have moved down the hall, near the vending machine, but Bobbi’s hearing is _just_ this side of superhuman, and they’re not as good as they think they are at keeping their voices down.

“I know, sweetie,” Jess says. She sounds tired. It’s probably Bobbi’s fault. “I’ll talk to her.”

Luke sighs. “She’s doing it on purpose. You know that, right? When I first got out of jail, with my unbreakable skin, I went through a—”

The nurse comes over with Bobbi’s discharge papers, disrupting her eavesdropping. Ines, that’s her name. She remembers her from last time.

“Here you go, Ms. Morse,” she says, handing the papers to Bobbi. “Signed and ready to go. Where’s your punch card? After four concussions, the fifth one’s free.”

Bobbi cracks a smile at that one. “Even if they heal by the time the doctor sees me?”

“Your fancy Avengers insurance gets charged for it just the same,” Ines responds.

Bobbi shrugs. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t waste your time. But my friends...they’re a little overanxious.”

“Lucky you.”

Said friends approach then, and Ines leaves her in their hands. “Coming back to the Mansion?" Luke asks.

Bobbi shakes her head. “I think I’m just gonna go home.” Jess opens her mouth, probably to say that the Mansion is her home, too, so Bobbi adds, “To my own place.”

Luke and Jessica exchange a look, and Luke says, “I’m gonna go get a coffee.”

Bobbi raises her eyebrows as Luke walks away, then turns to Jessica. “Real subtle.”

“He’s addicted.” Jess smirks, not even pretending to believe her own words. “It’s a curse.”

“Mmm.”

“Listen, do you want someone to go with you to Brooklyn?” Jess asks. “I can call Dom.”

Bobbi shakes her head. She hasn’t assigned a label to whatever’s happening between her and Dominic Fortune, whether they’re just hooking up or if it’s a fledgling relationship, but they definitely haven’t reached pick-her-up-at-the-hospital levels of closeness yet. 

“Clint?” Jessica offers tentatively.

Bobbi gives her a sideways look. “If I weren't fine, they wouldn't be releasing me. I don't need a babysitter, Jess.” She walks out the automatic doors of the hospital, the smoggy August heat greeting her like a brick wall.

Jess follows her outside, and they stop next to a parking sign near the entrance. Jess’s hand automatically goes to her pocket, looking for a nonexistent cigarette, and she smiles sheepishly when she catches herself. “I know, but it's just—you're scaring me, Bobbi,” she says. “Three concussions in a month can’t be good for you, infinity formula or no infinity formula. It seems like you’ve been taking more and more risks lately.”

This afternoon _was_ pretty wild. They were fighting some sort of giant monster from a different dimension—there was a lot of fire involved, so either a dragon or a demon, sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart—and Bobbi leaped off a fire escape onto its back. The fight was great, but the only problem was, once they knocked the creature out, it went down heavy. Bringing her with it.

“Yeah, well.” She clears her throat. “My body can take it, obviously.”

“Until it can’t.”

Bobbi turns away, but Jess keeps talking. “The super-soldier junk that Clint and Fury gave you gives you peak strength and resilience, but you’re not Wolverine. You’re not invincible.”

And if she were Wolverine, she wouldn't be getting this speech. But Mockingbird, she's the weak link, the one with no powers. The one who foolishly got herself captured by aliens and came back with her head all screwed up, then went and got shot, wasting the team's precious time and resources finding a solution.

“I _know_ what I can handle,” Bobbi bites out. Jess opens her mouth to retort, but she doesn’t want to hear it, so she just...walks away. She knows it’s a shitty move. She's been a shitty friend lately, just like she's a shitty Avenger and a shitty wife/ex-wife/girlfriend, but she can't put the anger aside for long enough to do anything about it.

“Come on, Bobbi, don't just leave,” Jess calls. 

Bobbi lashes out in response, punching a newspaper rack and leaving a dent in the metal. She doesn’t look back at Jess’s disappointed face, just keeps walking forward for three blocks, until she's stopped shaking, then hails a cab.

“Quincy and Thomas in Bed-Stuy,” she tells the cabbie. The traffic will be hell at this hour, but to be honest, the traffic is hell at all hours. She just hopes she makes it home before the sun starts setting.

After SHIELD absorbed the WCA, she needed to find a new place to live. There’s always the Mansion, of course, but sometimes she needs to be alone. Brooklyn is completely new to her, and she’s finding that she likes it. It’s still city life, but not quite as metropolitan as Manhattan. In Bed-Stuy, she can breathe. Metaphorically, that is. The air is just as humid here as in the city, but the people don’t move quite as fast.

As they approach the building, Bobbi can see Ivan, her landlord, and her neighbor Simone arguing on the sidewalk. Simone is holding her toddler on her hip while the six-year-old, Charlie, tugs on her arm. Ivan is gesturing angrily and yelling, and two of the guys from his “tracksuit mafia,” Ivan’s Russian pals whose closets seem to be one hundred percent velour Adidas jogging suits from the 1970s, are carrying shit out of the building—presumably, Simone’s belongings.

“Uh-oh,” Bobbi says.

“You know her?” the cabbie asks.

“Mmm.” Bobbi pays him and steps out of the car. She walks toward them and shouts out, “Hey! What’s going on?”

“Mind your business, girlie,” Ivan says. “Lady is not paying rent. I am landlord, I decide what happens.”

“He’s _tripling_ our rent!” Simone exclaims, outraged. “Don’t they have laws against this type of thing?”

Bobbi is proficient twelve different styles of martial arts, has a PhD in biology, and speaks seven languages fluently (including two different dialects of Skrull), but one thing she is not well-versed in is law. But right now, she doesn’t care. She is so futzing sick of watching the strong prey on the weak and getting away with it. She looks at Ivan’s contemptuous face, and in it, she sees the faces of all the rest of them: Superia, the Skrull who’d pretended to be Clint, Lincoln Slade and William Cross and everyone else who ever thought they could hurt her and get away with it.

But punching Ivan in his smug mouth isn’t going to help Simone right now. “Listen, I have money, I can lend—” She turns to Ivan. “I can get you the money to cover the new rent.”

“Oh, you can get me, yeah?” he laughs scornfully. “I have heard ‘I can get you’ before, Bro. No deal.”

Asshole. “Do you have somewhere to go?” she asks Simone.

“My sister.” Simone shakes her head and sighs. “I hate to do this to her.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Bobbi promises her, a plan already forming in her head. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

—-

On Bobbi’s first evening in the apartment, her neighbor across the hall invited her up to the roof to socialize with the rest of the tenants. She was skeptical—New York in the twenty-first century and people actually know their neighbors?—but it turned out to be a pretty nice gathering. There was food and beer, and everyone introduced themselves and welcomed her in. She told everyone that she did research for a living, which wasn’t a total lie, and since then, they’ve accepted her as one of them.

These gatherings happen once or twice a week. Not everyone shows up every time, of course. People have their own things going on. Except for Grills, so named because he’s always grilling. They all chip in for the food, and sometimes someone brings out a guitar, and they stay up there until the neighbors threaten to call the cops.

Bobbi really enjoys these evenings. She usually shows up a little late, because she’s waiting for the sun to go down completely before going out. Sunsets still trigger flashbacks for her occasionally, and she’d rather not deal with questions.

Tonight, the atmosphere is tense. Everyone’s talking about how Simone is only the first one to go, that they’re all going to be muscled out of the building because the mafia has some sort of nefarious plans for the place. The rumors get bigger and bigger as the hour gets later.

She really doesn’t want to move again so soon. The sense of community in this place is something really special, for one. Aside from that, it’s just a hassle. It’s not the money. Money, she’s got.

“It’s happening all over the neighborhood,” Deke says. “Gentrification. They’re going to build a bunch of high-rises.”

“They’re going to burn this all down, collect the insurance money, and _then_ build a bunch of high-rises,” Tito corrects him.

Deke takes a beer from the table and pops it open. “Nah, Ivan wouldn’t bother evacuating us before setting the building on fire.”

Ivan needs to go, is what Bobbi’s hearing. She can—she can do that. She _gets things done_. That’s what she needs to remember. Even without powers, she was a force to be reckoned with. Now? She’s unstoppable. Let someone come and try.

She looks up at the others. “Where can I find him?”

—-

Ostensibly, she didn’t come to start a fight.

Ostensibly, she was just planning on showing up with a suitcase full of money to pay the new rent for the entire building.

But Ivan’s not a reasonable man, and before she knows it, she’s fighting off ten, fifteen guys in maroon-red tracksuits, barely breaking a sweat.

“Is that all you got?” she shouts, as another one falls. “This is your best shot?”

A shadow falls over her, but before she can react, there’s a bark from behind her, and then a scream. She turns to see a tracksuit mobster holding a pipe, hunched over in pain, bloody tooth marks on his hand. The dog, the one she stopped to pet on her way in, is barking angrily at the guy, whose face is red in anger. He shouts a very rude word in Russian and kicks the dog, who goes flying across the room. Bobbi gasps.

“Did you just _kick_ a dog?” she says, livid. “You—you know that’s a trope, right? In a movie or a book, if someone kicks a dog, you know that they’re not just a regular villain...they’re the worst kind of bad guy there is.”

The guy responds with a snarl.

“Go to hell,” she says, punctuating the sentence with a spit.

He tackles her, pulling her sideways and sending the two of them right through the front window. They fall onto the sidewalk in an explosion of shattered glass, and Bobbi rolls on top and knocks him out with a single punch.

She looks up. Some pedestrians are staring.

She feels kind of dizzy.

“It’s okay!” Bobbi announces, standing up. “I’m an Avenger.”

Outer borough or not, it's still New York, so most of the bystanders go back to what they were doing before the commotion. Ivan walks out the front door, his white sneakers stepping indiscriminately on the broken glass.

He looks her over, possibly taking her seriously for the first time. “You crazy, Bro,” he says in disbelief. “I know law, Bro. Is my right to raise rent.” He looks around at the mess on the sidewalk. “What kind of Avenger does this?”

A crazy Avenger. Yeah, she’s considering owning that one.

Bobbi slides a hidden stave out of her sleeve, letting it hang loose in her hand. “You know, it's a funny name, ‘Avengers,’” she muses. She slides. “Considering that what they really do is defend. They see an attack, they stop it. You know? The Avengers don’t go around tracking people down, starting fights. They just contain the damage. They certainly never kill anyone. They’re _heroes_.”

She grins, showing her teeth. “Me, I got kicked out of the Avengers.” She pauses for effect, twirling a stave over the back of her hand and catching it. “Killed a guy. They didn't take it well. I guess I’m just too violent for their pristine asses.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out an envelope with a check inside, handing it to him. “Anyway, here's the rest of your money,” she adds cheerfully.

“What money?” he asks. She already left the duffel bag with the rent cash inside.

“For the building. It’s two million more than your original buyer was going to pay. I’m your new buyer.” It's a good deal. If he tries to turn it down, she'll know something’s up.

Ivan looks like he’s about to piss his pants, but he puts on a decent show, grunting, “Not—not looking for new buyer.”

Bobbi taps her stave against her thigh and repeats herself slowly. “I'm your new buyer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Sophie B. Hawkins's [Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt6r-k9Bk6o).
> 
> I’ve wondered for a while what it would have looked like if Fraction had decided to write his book about Mockingbird instead of Hawkeye. At the time when the series starts, she’s coming out of three years of captivity and is being treated for PTSD. Her estranged husband begs her to give their relationship another shot but then changes his mind when he realizes how complicated her psyche has become. And after all that, she gets shot and nearly dies, and when she wakes up, she’s told that she now has a mixture of the super-soldier serum and the infinity formula running through her veins, giving her peak human strength and an extended lifespan. She’s clearly dealing with a lot, and I can’t help but wonder what we would have seen had the story decided to focus on her.
> 
> Because of the nature of the story, there may be some OOC behavior—just roll with it and I'll try to wrap it up cleanly.


	2. All Who Wander

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate! Coffee! Antics at the circus!

“Bobbi, I’m retired,” Jess says, for the third time.

“Yeah, I know, but this is barely—”

“Re. Tired,” she repeats. They walk through the Mansion hallway into the dining room, where they find Luke and Danny eating takeout. “What about Danny?” Jess suggests.

Danny looks up. “What about Danny what?”

“I need a partner for an extracurricular project,” Bobbi says.

Luke looks put out. “Why Danny and not me?”

“Not you because I need _you_ home at night,” Jess retorts. “You know how I get when I’m sleep-deprived.” She turns to Bobbi. “Dani is going through a growth spurt and a sleep regression and I can't even talk about it.”

“I wish I could,” Danny says to Bobbi. "But between the Avengers and work...”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bobbi tells him. “I’ll find someone.”

“Disgusting,” Jess says out of the blue. It takes Bobbi a few seconds to realize that she isn’t talking to her. She looks over and sees Jess holding up an issue of The Pulse that she picked up off the table. There’s a photo of the Young Avengers splashed across the cover, and in big white letters: YOUNG AVENGERS: WHERE WILL THEY GO FROM HERE?

Jess clicks her tongue in disapproval. “Using Cassie’s death to make a quick buck.”

“I read it,” Danny says. “It was actually a pretty respectful tribute.”

Jess scoffs. “You don’t know Jonah like I do.”

Bobbi keeps her mouth shut. There’s some history here that she’s missing—she knows that Jess has been a kind of mentor to the Young Avengers, but she doesn’t know what the connection is with Jameson. She takes a second look at the magazine and something catches her eye.

“What’s this?” she asks, pointing. The kids are all in their uniforms, Wiccan and Speed back-to-back in the middle, with Hulkling on Wiccan’s right and Hawkeye on Speed’s left, standing in between him and Patriot. Hawkeye’s arms are folded over her chest, her chin pointed up so that she’s staring down the camera imperiously, and for the first time ever, Bobbi notices that strapped to Kate’s left thigh are a pair of white battle staves that look exactly like her own.

Jess looks over her shoulder. “Oh, yeah. They’re an old pair of yours. She found them here in the Mansion, the first night—did you ever hear about how the Young Avengers formed?”

She knows the gist. After Wanda’s literal break with reality, the Avengers disbanded, and a few months later, a bunch of superpowered teenagers had found each other and started a new team, against Captain America’s wishes. Kate had invited herself along, despite having no powers, and the chutzpah she’d shown in standing up to Cap had earned her the Hawkeye name.

“I never noticed them before,” Bobbi says. She thinks back to all the times she’s fought next to the Young Avengers, and she can’t recall ever seeing her use them. It’s kind of impractical to switch back and forth between a bow and sticks. She wonders why Kate still carries the staves, when the bow has become her signature weapon.

“The other kids teased her about it at first,” Jess says. “Called her Hawkingbird.”

The corner of Bobbi’s mouth curls up. “Hawkingbird, huh?”

“That’s right.” Jess meets her look and it’s clear she knows what Bobbi’s thinking. “I have her number, if you want it.”

—

She makes the call later in the day, from the corded landline phone in the kitchen of her apartment. It rings three times, and then Kate picks up. “Hello?”

“Hi. Kate?”

“Yep.” Casual. Confident. She likes that in a partner.

“This is Bobbi Morse.” There's a beat of silence, so she adds, “Mockingbird.”

“Yeah, of course, I know who you are.” Now Kate sounds a little flustered. “Cool. What’s up?”

“I’m looking for a partner for a job.”

“Oh?” Kate says.

There’s another pause, and then Bobbi adds (in case it wasn’t clear), “I was wondering if you would be interested.”

“Oh!” A note of surprise enters her voice. “I mean—why me?”

She has to take a second to think about how to answer that. “Well, Jessica Jones says you’re pretty sharp.”

Kate laughs. “Jessica Jones is pretty sharp herself.”

“She’s also, unfortunately, retired.” Bobbi pauses again, trying to figure out a way to phrase what she wants to say. There isn’t really a good way, though, so she just spits it out: “I noticed that you carry around a pair of staves.”

“Um,” Kate says sheepishly. “Um, yeah.”

“Well, I was wondering,” Bobbi continues. “Do you know how to use them?”

There’s silence on the other end.

“Would you like to learn?”

—

“What’s your dog’s name?” Kate asks.

Her dog—Bobbi hasn’t quite started thinking of him that way yet, but she guesses it’s true. After saving her life, the dog from Ivan’s underground casino had followed her home. None of the guys inside had protested, so she he probably wasn’t exactly a cherished pet before. She took him to a vet and made sure he was healthy and up-to-date on shots, stopped off for dog food and a leash on the way back, and he’s been with her ever since.

“He’s...between names,” Bobbi says. It’s not a lie—the tag on his collar had said “Arrow,” but she doesn’t need any reminders of her ex-husband in this house. And anyway, he doesn’t answer to it.

Kate scratches behind the dog’s ears, and he puts his front paws on her lap. “He’s friendly,” she says.

“That he is.” Could be useful to have a dog around. Bobbi wonders if dogs can sniff out Skrulls. Probably not, she decides, if Wolverine and Tigra hadn’t been able to do it. Well, no matter. There are other ways of picking them out.

She fills up the dog’s food and water and then turns to Kate. “So. You ready to get started?”

They start with some basic Kali techniques, reviewing and drilling various angles of attack. Kate’s a fast learner, which doesn’t surprise her, and after a while, they move on to more practical drills, Bobbi setting up attacks for Kate to defend against.

“Watch your elbow,” Bobbi warns after Kate makes the same mistake twice. “You’re leaving your torso open.”

Kate sighs, and they take it from the top.

Afterwards, Bobbi puts on a pot of coffee. “How do you take yours?” she asks, opening the cupboard.

“Black,” Kate answers from behind her. Bobbi can hear her rifling through the cut-up newspapers on the counter. “What’s all this?”

“Well, they’re either clues or they’re garbage.” Bobbi pulls out a pile of photos. “See, as a spy and a biologist, I’ve been trained to notice patterns. Take a look at these.” She opens her laptop while Kate peruses the pictures.

“You took these?” Kate asks. Bobbi murmurs a yes. “What's it mean?” 

“Hmm. At first, looking them up on the internet sent me deep into a rabbit hole of really awful conspiracy theories, but I eventually found something that seems legit. It's called a code called hoboglyphs. This one warns other people who can read it to get out of town.” Bobbi turns the computer around so that Kate can see the chart.

Bobbi brings the coffee out so that they can brainstorm. She pours Kate's black, as requested, and adds milk to her own.

“I thought detectives were supposed to drink stale black coffee and smoke cigarettes,” Kate jokes.

Bobbi chuckles. “You want to leave yours out for a few hours before drinking it, be my guest.” For her part, she has no interest in making life more bitter than it needs to be. 

Kate sits in front of the computer and starts typing away while Bobbi looks between the photos and the headlines, trying to find any more patterns she may have overlooked.

“Okay, this sounds familiar,” Kate says after a few minutes. “There's this new super-fancy hotel opening up in lower Manhattan next week. Right next to the South Street Seaport. That's a weird place to put a ritzy hotel, right? What kind or rich person visits the city and stays all the way down there? And, get this—the owner is Bernie Gunn, a shady-as-fuck friend of my father's.”

“Okay, okay. Good.” Bobbi writes that down. Kate was really a stroke of luck. She’s perfect for this gig.

“Grand opening is Sunday night,” Kate continues. “There's a performance by the Cirque du Nuit.” Her French accent is flawless and seemingly effortless. “Do you know who they are?”

Possibilities start to run through her head. “Find out who the ringmaster is.”

Kate starts typing again, and Bobbi sips on her coffee.

It doesn’t take long to find an answer. “Some guy named Myron Talbot?”

Bobbi nods. “M-T. That’s gotta be the Ringmaster. Real name, Maynard Tiboldt. It’s a common trick to pick an alias with the same initials as your own—makes it easier to remember.”

“And easier to get caught?” Kate says.

“Only by people who know what to look for. When did you say this opening was?”

“Sunday night. I can get us invites,” Kate offers. “Bernie Gunn bought me my first pony, the old sonuvabitch.”

Perfect.

—

The night before the opening, Bobbi dreams that she’s hiding in a dark cupboard with a dirt floor, wearing her old leotard costume. She’s dirty and sweaty and hungry, but she’s frozen in place. She can hear heavy footsteps outside and the voices of her friends arguing with each other in Skrull.

“She’s doing it on purpose,” says Luke.

“Bobbi? Can you hear me?” Jessica calls.

Bobbi wipes her sweaty palms against the fabric of her costume and curls deeper into herself, rocking back and forth, trying to keep her breathing as quiet as possible. She hears Spider-Man saying, “She’s got to be around here somewhere.”

Next is Greer’s voice. “She’s beginning to suspect you.”

“She’s a lost cause,” Clint says. “We should stop looking.”

“Testing her limits, that’s all.” That’s Luke again. “It’ll just get worse if you—”

“Bobbi?” Jess interrupts him, louder now. Bobbi wants to answer her, but she knows she can’t let herself be caught.

“This is bad,” says Doc Samson with a sigh.

She wakes up scared and angry, and she wants to cry but her eyes won’t form the tears, and she wants to hit something but there’s nothing in her room to hit. There’s an unopened box in the corner of the room with the punching bag she bought when she first moved in, but she hasn’t gotten around to installing it yet.

She picks her phone up off the nightstand and starts to scroll through her contacts. There aren’t many people she can call at two in the morning. With Dani's sleep regression, both Jess and Luke are off the list. Logan might be awake, but he's not really the type to chat with over the phone. The rest of her teammates she's not really that close with.

Dom would come over if she asked him to. He's actually not a bad listener, and the sex is good enough that it would distract her from her thoughts. But if she called him over this nightmare, then she would call him for the next nightmare, over and over until before she knew it, she would be emotionally dependent on him, and Dominic Fortune is not a man who is emotionally available. She knew that when she started this thing, and she hasn't forgotten it now. 

She swipes up and down at the screen casually, almost absently, until Clint's name comes into view. 

Her thumb hovers over his name for a few seconds. It would be so easy. She wouldn't even have to tell him about the dream—he would know right away why she was calling, and just hearing his voice would soothe her. 

She imagines his phone buzzing, his arm moving to pick it up automatically. He rubs his eyes, squints at the screen, sees her name. Disentangles himself from Spider-Woman's arms... 

Yeah, she’s not calling Clint.

Before she can change her mind, she swipes down and clicks on the phone icon next to Dom’s name. Smothering the voice inside her head telling her it’s a bad idea, she waits for it to start ringing on the other end and for Dom to pick up.

She hears him clear his throat as he picks up the phone. When he speaks, his voice is husky and just a touch smug. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Bobbi says, sitting up and turning on the lamp on her nightstand. “What are you up to?”

—

Kate takes care of the invites and the dresses, and Bobbi brings the SHIELD-issued sunglasses to protect them from the Ringmaster’s hypnosis powers. The hotel lobby is full of underworld bosses, supervillains, and scam artists. Bobbi hopes her disguise holds long enough for them to get to the bottom of what’s going on.

Ringmaster pulls the exact trick they were expecting—his modus operandi of petrifying the crowd through hypnosis and then sending his flunkies to steal their valuables from right under their unmoving noses. Bobbi and Kate sneak out, unnoticed, to the basement, where they split up to intercept the thieves as they try to escape.

Bobbi finds the door that leads to the pier and watches as the clowns start loading bags onto a boat. She’s about to turn around to get Kate when she feels a crowbar hit the back of the head.

“Ow!” she says, turning around to face the attacker. “That could have really hurt!”

He goes for her face this time, but she catches the crowbar and wrenches it away from him, then knocks him out with it. Two more henchmen come up behind him, and she easily dispatches them. Four, five, more—she takes down the first dozen-plus easily, but they keep coming at her (who knew it took this many people to run a scam?) and eventually, the sheer number of them overwhelms her. Hands grab her arms and hold them still while someone shoves a handkerchief over her nose. She struggles against it, but they’re all crushed into the room like sardines in a can, and there’s nowhere for her to go. Slowly, her vision dims and it all goes dark.

 _That’s the fourth time this month_ , she thinks as it all slips away.

The next thing she feels is a bucketful of cold water being poured all over her head. She sputters and flinches, then starts to gasp as the cold seeps into her dress. She’s on her knees with her hands handcuffed behind her back. The handcuffs won’t be a problem, but she should probably get her bearings before she makes a move. Opening her eyes, she sees the swordsman from the circus act standing in front of her, three or four goons on each side of him, each pointing a gun at her. In the corner, there’s a woman in white face paint and a pink wig with arrows sticking out of it, crossing her arms and looking bored. She can hear a few more people moving behind her, probably also armed.

“I wanted to personally meet the woman who gave my associates so much trouble.” He looks her over, his eyes not registering any hint of recognition, then drops his phony French accent. “Okay, who the hell are you?”

Well, that’s a little insulting. “I’m Mockingbird. I’m an Avenger.”

“An Avenger, hmm? I don’t recognize you.” He snorts derisively. “What’s your power?”

She glares at him, clenching her jaw so hard she can feel the wear and tear on her teeth. It takes all she has to keep her from tearing apart the handcuffs like a piece of string, to hold out for a more strategic opportunity.

“Never mind,” he says, waving his hand dismissively. He turns to the henchman on his left and gives him very specific instructions on killing her and disposing of the body. A chill runs down Bobbi’s spine at the dispassionate way he lists off the steps, as if this is nothing new to him.

Bobbi bides her time, letting the men lead her into the hallway. There are only six of them now, plus the girl in the wig—

—who turns out to be Kate in disguise, of course. Quick as a whip, Kate starts picking the henchmen off with the arrows from her wig, and Bobbi takes the opportunity to wrench her hands outward, snapping the chain of the handcuffs. She punches out the guys Kate left for her, and the door behind them bursts open, bullets spraying.

The rest of the fight is a blur of broken glass, arrows, swimming pools, and screams. Bobbi’s favorite part is when she takes a pool chair and hits one guy over the head with it, then smacks another two guys’ heads together. Kate proves to be extremely dangerous with her bow, and Bobbi reminds herself to thank Jess later.

Finally, the swordsman is the only one left standing. He’s holding a sword in each hand, but it’s pretty obvious that he’s not going to win a fight with the two of them on his own. Instead, he takes one of his swords and points to the carnage all over the room. “What kind of Avenger does _this_?” he asks, his voice halfway between horror and awe.

Bobbi stares at him for a few seconds. “You know what?” she says. “You’re right.”

He tilts his head, trying to figure her out, and Bobbi puts her hand in her pocket and presses a button. There’s a crackling sound and his body starts to convulse. Before he can so much as scream, he falls down, unconscious.

Bobbi retrieves her piece from his pocket, and she and Kate tie him up and call the police. As she hangs up, they hear a huge commotion coming from upstairs. Bobbi and Kate exchange a glance. “The guests are awake,” Bobbi says.

“We’ve gotta get out of here before they see us,” Kate says.

They make a dash for the back door, which leads straight to the pier and the boat of stolen goods.

“Oh, no,” Bobbi says, staring up at it. “I can’t run a boat. Give me a quinjet, a skycycle, or a flying car any day, but I’m shit at anything water-based.”

Kate flashes her an exhilarated smile. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m great at boats.”


	3. Go Baby Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobbi goes out to the store on a simple errand, leading to a string of iffy decisions and a high-speed car chase.

“Hey, Boss, check it out,” Kate says.

Bobbi sets down the moving box she's holding and looks over at the couch where Kate is lounging and eating pizza. Somehow, the dog has gotten a hold of a slice, and he's enthusiastically chowing down.

Kate laughs in delight. “Look, he loves it!”

The way he’s digging into it really is adorable. Bobbi takes out her phone and snaps a picture. 

“You should call him Pizza,” Kate suggests.

“I’m not naming my dog Pizza.” She really should settle on a name, though. It’s been a few weeks, and she’s tried out different options, but none of the names she’s tried feels right yet. “Pass me those scissors, would you?”

Kate wordlessly hands her the heavy-duty scissors off the coffee table. 

“Save me some pizza,” Bobbi reminds her. “I thought you were going to help me with this.” _This_ being unpacking the last few boxes that she never got around to opening after moving into the apartment.

“Is this a Mr. Miyagi thing?” Kate asks. “I help you with your boxes and when everything's all unpacked, I'm suddenly the best stick fighter ever?”

Bobbi laughs. “No, I just wanted the help.”

Kate stands up and walks to the kitchen. “All right, but I'm going to need to get caffeinated first. We're not all super soldiers.” Bobbi shakes her head, then starts to cut through the masking tape along the box's seam.

“We’re out of coffee,” Kate announces.

Bobbi puts the scissors down and turns to her, raising her eyebrows. “‘We?’”

Kate stares back, guileless, until Bobbi finally throws up her arms and says, “I’ll go get more.”

—

Parked in front of the bodega around the corner is a restored 1970 Dodge Challenger, bright poppy red with a black stripe down the middle. It’s sleek and shiny and sexy, and it makes Bobbi stop in her tracks. The thought crosses her mind, what’s car like that doing in a neighborhood like this, but she’s too busy ogling to worry about it too much.

“You’re drooling all over my car.”

Bobbi turns around. The owner—a tall, green-eyed redhead with long, loose hair—walks up, grinning cheekily at her. She’s gorgeous, in a trouble-with-a-capital-T kind of way, and Bobbi’s stomach flips in a way it hasn’t done in a long time.

“It’s the most beautiful car I’ve ever seen,” Bobbi says, no hyperbole. “I’ve always wanted one.”

“Well, this one’s for sale,” the woman says.

Bobbi narrows her eyes. “No.” She checks the car out again, then turns back to its owner. “Really?”

“Limited time, cash only.” She’s still smiling, but her eyes are sharp. This is probably a bad idea. But...

Bobbi sticks out her hand. “I’m Bobbi.”

The redhead bites her lip as she shakes Bobbi’s hand, then says, “Call me Cherry.”

Cherry. That’s not a name, that’s a flavor of Coke. But it fits her vibe, and Bobbi doesn't know her well enough to start asking questions.

They stop by the bank so Bobbi can take out the cash, and then to Cherry’s apartment so she can write out a receipt. Her place is a dumpy studio, barely furnished—probably rented short-term with cash. She’s hiding from someone, Bobbi figures.

Cherry hangs up both of their jackets and indicates a ratty armchair near the window. “Make yourself at home,” she says. “Can I get you a drink?”

There’s a bottle of expensive whiskey on the counter. Cherry runs her hand possessively down the neck of the bottle and opens a cupboard. She turns around and looks at Bobbi, waiting for her answer.

It would be wasted on her, but Bobbi doesn’t want to turn this woman down. She’s got this charisma, some humming undercurrent of energy surrounding her that makes Bobbi want to get close, makes her want to make her smile.

Bobbi joins her next to the counter, and they make a toast to beautiful cars. “And beautiful women,” Cherry adds, touching her glass to Bobbi’s and holding it there for a few more seconds than necessary.

Warmth spreads throughout her body, nothing to do with the alcohol. This is such a bad idea—she has no idea who this woman is, what she’s involved in, why she’s living in a hovel while drinking hundred-dollar Scotch and driving a fifty-thousand dollar car, but her lips look so soft, and her hair is so pretty, and she’s smiling at Bobbi with a look in her eyes like Bobbi’s the only one who can give her what she needs—or is it vice versa? Bobbi hasn’t been with a woman since her Academy days, and isn’t it about time? So, she's a stranger. So what? After all the crap Bobbi's been through over the past few years, doesn’t she deserve to do something (someone) just because she wants to?

Their lips touch, soft as a whisper. Cherry’s wearing fruit-flavored chapstick, and Bobbi wants to bite her lower lip and lick the flavor off, but she forces herself to move slowly, not wanting to scare her away. She puts her hand on the other woman’s waist, under her jacket, and they kiss again, deeper this time. Cherry’s arms circle Bobbi, she puts her hands in Bobbi’s hair and takes out the clip holding her hair up. Bobbi’s hair falls down her shoulders, the ends brushing against Cherry’s own copper locks.

She needs to be closer. God, she hasn’t felt this turned on in so long. She slides her hands to Cherry’s ass, picks her up and sets her down on the counter in front of her. Moving in between Cherry’s legs, she sets her hands to undoing the button at the top of Cherry’s jeans, her movements starting to get more frenetic. Cherry meets her move for move, pulling off her own shirt and then raising her hips so that Bobbi can pull her jeans off.

She’s so fucking gorgeous, sitting there in a lacy rose bralette and matching cotton panties, leaning back on her hands so that Bobbi can get a good look. Long legs, smooth skin, that captivating smile...damn, she likes what she sees.

“Can I touch you?” Bobbi asks. She’s surprised at the breathless note she hears in her voice.

Cherry smiles, grabs Bobbi’s shirt at the neck, and pulls her in for another kiss.

—

As Bobbi pulls her pants on, the first thought that comes to mind is, _Oh, futz, I forgot the coffee._

“Hey, do you have the time?” Cherry asks. Bobbi looks around and notes that the apartment has no clock. “I need to be at the airport by five.”

“Love ‘em and leave ‘em, huh?” Bobbi jokes.

“Ha. Something like that.”

“You know,” Bobbi says, serious now, “if you're in trouble, I might be able to help.”

Cherry just gives her that enigmatic smile. “But if I told you, then I'd have—”

That’s when the door gets kicked in. All hell breaks loose, Tracksuit Draculas bursting into the room with guns, spraying bullets everywhere. Cherry screams and drops to the floor while Bobbi dives behind the bed.

“Run!” Cherry shouts from behind the armchair, but Bobbi ignores that. She looks frantically for something to use as a weapon, but then the tracksuits move into her range of motion, which is their mistake, because now, she’s close enough to disarm them.

She wonders how they found her here, and why they bothered—it’s not as if they don’t know where she lives. As she knocks two tracksuits’ heads together and knees another one in the balls, she can’t help but smile a little. This is good, she needed this. Get the blood flowing. She’s having so much fun beating these guys up that it almost doesn’t register when she looks over at Cherry’s hiding spot and doesn’t see her.

Almost.

Bobbi grabs the nearest tracksuit and pushes him against the wall. “Where’s the girl?” she demands.

“Keep away from her, Bro,” he responds, panting. “Bro, she trouble.”

Bobbi shoves him to the floor and runs outside just in time to see her new red 1970 Dodge Challenger take off down the block.

_No, no, no, no._ She runs after the car for a few blocks, but even with the combination of super soldier powers and adrenaline, there’s no way she can outrun a car. Giving up on that approach, Bobbi heads back to the apartment, hoping to beat some answers from the guys who were left behind. By the time she gets back, though, they’ve all cleared out, leaving behind a splintered door, lots of broken furniture, and Bobbi’s shirt and shoes. She looks around at the wreckage, then screams in frustration and punches a hole into the wall before sighing and getting her phone out.

It takes Kate all of ten minutes to get there, and Bobbi jumps into the car the second the purple Beetle pulls up to the sidewalk, not even waiting for it to come to a complete stop. “Go go go!” she shouts, pulling the door shut behind her.

Kate, who doesn’t seem to appreciate the urgency of the situation, gives Bobbi a scrutinizing look over her purple sunglasses. “Your shirt’s on backwards,” she says.

Bobbi feels along the neckline to check; so it is. Not that it matters right now, when the Tracksuit Draculas have taken Cherry hostage and—wait a second, did that last guy say that _Cherry_ was trouble? Not Bobbi?

Never mind that. “Come on, Kate, we’re racing against the clock!”

“Okay, okay.” The engine roars as Kate floors it, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.

They head west, toward the city. Bobbi doesn’t take her eyes off her phone, watching the blinking dot representing the tracker in her Avengers ID card move slowly northward on the map. “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she mutters under her breath.

After a few minutes, Kate looks over and says, “You know this is ten-to-one a setup, right?”

Bobbi finally looks up from her phone and frowns at Kate.

“Really?” Kate shakes her head. “Wow. I thought you were supposed to be smart. She’s obviously a tracksuit plant sent to lure you to some sort of...secondary location or something.”

“Have you been binging John Mulaney again?” Bobbi asks, eyebrows raised.

Kate points a finger at her. “Don’t change the subject.”

Bobbi considers Kate’s theory. It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through when they could just as easily have knocked on her door, but she supposes it’s a possibility. “Let’s just intercept them before they get there,” Bobbi says. “I've fought my way out of hundreds of traps, if that's what it is.”

Kate starts muttering to herself. “‘Come help me finish unpacking, Kate. It'll be fun, Kate. I'll order pi—’”

“You know I can hear you, right?” Bobbi interrupts. 

“Well, yeah,” Kate says. “Otherwise, why would I bother?” 

Catching up with the car takes much longer than Bobbi is comfortable with due to city traffic, but at least it slows the bad guys down, too. Finally, it's in sight. Bobbi points the car out.

“Oh my God, it’s beautiful,” Kate says. “I can’t damage such a—”

“Kate, do it!” Bobbi shouts.

“Okay!” Kate shouts back, and she rams her car into the Challenger. Glass goes flying everywhere, and Bobbi and Kate jump out of Kate’s Bug. Bobbi pulls the driver out of the seat of the Challenger and throws him onto the sidewalk. He doesn’t get up.

She turns back to the car and sees that Kate’s already made herself at home in the driver’s seat. Cherry’s in the backseat, still half-dressed, with her hands tied behind her back and a strip of duct tape over her mouth. “You okay?” Bobbi asks as she gets in on the passenger side.

Cherry responds with a muffled noise that could mean anything.

“I hate to break up this touching reunion,” Kate says, “but we’ve got incoming.” She makes a quick and highly illegal U-Turn, not waiting for Bobbi to close her door, and speeds off.

A flock of black Mini Coopers make chase and start shooting at them. “Shit,” Bobbi says. “We’ve got to take them out.” She leans into the backseat and carefully pulls the tape away from Cherry’s mouth. “Do you have any—”

“Glove compartment,” Cherry says quickly. Bobbi checks, and sure enough, there’s a loaded Glock tucked away in there.

“Cute,” Bobbi says. “You got any more magazines somewhere around here, or is this it?”

“How much trouble do you think I’m in?” Cherry asks, sounding a little offended. In response, Bobbi and Kate turn in unison and give her dry looks. Suitably chastised, she answers the question. “No. I don’t.”

“Yeah, I don’t love our odds,” Kate says to Bobbi.

“Don’t worry,” Bobbi says, rolling down her window and unbuckling her seatbelt. “I’m extremely difficult to kill.”

She leans out the window and starts picking their pursuers off, trying to be as conservative as she can be with her shots. Despite her best efforts, there’s still one more car on their tail when she runs out of rounds. Oh, well. Time to see what this whole “super soldier” thing is really all about.

As she climbs out the window, she vaguely hears Kate screaming at her to get back inside, but she ignores it. Crouching on the roof of the car, she feels as steady as if she were on solid ground, and the wind whipping through her hair makes her feel truly invincible. This is...this is amazing. She’s never felt as alive as she does right now.

She’s got to stay alive, though, which means moving quickly. She jumps from the Challenger to the Mini Cooper with her leg extended in a kick. The windshield breaks around her foot—the brakes squeal—the car swerves into the shoulder and spins around—there are honks and screams and the crunch of tires over broken glass—and Bobbi is thrown from the car. She rolls over a few times after hitting the ground, and all of a sudden she feels really, really sleepy.

At some point, she’s woken up by the pain in her leg, which feels like it’s on fire. Bobbi opens her eyes and sees a large piece of glass embedded in her calf, blood running freely down her leg. Her stomach flips again, not in a good way this time.

She looks up, right into the gun pointed at her face. “Bobbi!” Kate calls out. She’s standing about ten feet away, an arrow pointed at the Tracksuit Dracula holding Bobbi hostage.

Kate and the tracksuit start negotiating, and all Bobbi wants is to go back to sleep. Then she sees Kate loose the arrow way over the guy’s head—is she dreaming? The guy starts to laugh, and he’s still laughing when the arrow reverses trajectory and hits him right in the back of the head, knocking him clean out.

Bobbi stares at Kate. She recognizes that boomerang arrow. But—that means...

Kate gives her an apologetic shrug. “I’ve picked up a few tips from the other Hawkeye, too.”

—

“I’m just saying,” Bobbi says to Cherry as they stand in the departures hall at JFK, “I can help you. I am an Avenger, after all.”

Her leg has stopped bleeding since she bandaged it up with a strip off her (still-backwards) shirt and the duct tape that had been over Cherry’s mouth. It’s not the most hygienic wound dressing ever, but it works.

“You’re very sweet.” Cherry gives her a peck on the lips. “Thank you for saving my life.”

Bobbi touches her lips as she and Kate watch Cherry disappear into the crowd. Bobbi turns to Kate and says, “You were saying something about a setup?” 

Kate shrugs. “You’ve gotta admit, it's a hell of a coincidence.”

“I'm just lucky, I guess.”

“Lucky. Hmm.” They stand there in silence for a minute, and then Kate punches her in the arm and says, “Come on, let’s go get your ridiculously trashed car to a mechanic or something and go home. Hey, you remembered to pick up coffee, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is inspired by Garbage’s [Cherry Lips](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy1LdAaGASw).
> 
> Up to now, I've stuck pretty close to the original script, but next chapter has some fun extras scheduled for it. I'm excited! 
> 
> Comments are love.


	4. Pictures Came and Broke My Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate and Bobbi bond over shared experiences, but their conversation is cut short by the news that an extremely compromising videotape has been leaked and scheduled to be auctioned off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter’s late! Life’s been kind of busy lately.
> 
> Chapter title comes from the Buggles’ [Video Killed the Radio Star](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwuy4hHO3YQ).
> 
> This chapter contains content that may be triggering (see endnotes for specifics).

When Kate comes over on Tuesday afternoon, she’s in an exceptionally good mood.

“I come bearing gifts,” she announces, leaning down to scratch Lucky behind the ears.

Bobbi looks up from her book. “What’s this now?”

Kate reaches into the purple hobo bag she’s got slung over her shoulder, pulling out a little Ziploc of what looks like—yep, that’s weed—and tossing it onto Bobbi’s counter. “Remember how you said the other day that you can’t get drunk anymore because of your super-soldier junk?” Bobbi nods. “Well, this,” she lowers her voice to a reverent whisper, “is _magical herb_. Literally.”

Bobbi blinks. “What?”

“See, my friend Tommy’s a speedster,” Kate explains. “He also has a crazy metabolism, like you. And my friend Teddy—he’s half-Skrull, half-Kree, and so, you know, he's a shapeshifter, so _his_ metabolism is all screwy in its own special way.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And my friend Billy,” Kate continues, “well, he’s a wizard.”

Bobbi finally sets aside her book, then picks up the bag and examines its contents. It looks completely normal. “So, you’re saying he...enchanted this stuff?”

Kate gives her an impish grin. “It’s exactly as potent as the person taking it needs it to be.”

“Wow.” Bobbi shakes her head, impressed. “Kids these days are _ambitious_.”

—

Once they start smoking, it doesn’t take Kate long to start ranting about her family.

“He has all this money and he does nothing useful with it, just buys boats and buildings and fancy cars. He’s even got this so-called charity in his name which I’m pretty sure is a complete scam. Oh! And when we were little, he used to make me and my sister get dressed up for these fancy balls and pry information out of people that he could use to take down his competitors. Sometimes I think he’s an actual supervillain.”

Bobbi clicks her tongue in sympathy. Kate’s dad really does sound like a piece of work. Bobbi hasn’t seen her own father since she was eight, which sucked at the time, but eventually started to feel normal. Her mom and brother are good people. Even if Ben does hate her guts because she faked her death—even though she was just trying to protect them.

She misses him, though. Before, when they still thought she was dead, she was better at compartmentalizing it all, lying to herself and pretending that they probably never thought of her. But now that they know the truth, now that they’re actively choosing to stay away from her...well, she knows it’s for the best, that it keeps them safe, but the pang of missing them gets harder to ignore all the time.

Kate’s talking again. Bobbi tunes back in to the conversation. “This is good, though,” she’s saying, tapping her pointer finger on the joint. “I’m much less angry enough to kill him right now than I was ten minutes ago. It doesn’t sound like it, I know. I mean, I know that underneath it all, I still hate him, but it’s less of a pressing urge to murder. You ever kill anyone, Bobbi?”

Wisps of smoke escape Kate’s mouth and curl upward around her face before dissipating. Then Kate’s question registers.

“Oh, Lord,” Bobbi says. “You really want to know?”

Kate blinks. “Uh, well, I do _now_.”

She’s going to need some more fortification for this story. “Okay, then. Pass me that joint.” Kate hands it to her, and Bobbi takes another hit, then lets it settle before she starts speaking again. “Okay. So. Have you ever time traveled?”

Kate makes a so-so motion with her hand. “Uh, kinda?”

Bobbi makes a mental note to get the full context for that answer one day, then continues. “Well, this one time, when I was on the West Coast Avengers, this broken time machine dumped us in the Old West. Eighteen seventy-something. We ran into trouble right away, of course, and we ended up teaming up with this group of Western heroes. Two-Gun Kid, Rawhide Kid...and the Phantom Rider.” Memories start to invade her mind as she recounts the story, but she pushes them away, trying to stick to the dry facts. “Somehow, the Phantom Rider got it into his mind that I was some sort of goddess and that I was ‘destined’ to be with him. So he decided that the best way to facilitate that was to kidnap me and drug me with some sort of love potion that turned me into his adoring slave.”

“Oh, futz,” Kate says.

“Yep. Anyway, after I snapped out of it, I went to confront him. There was this mountaintop...he thought it was sacred, so I knew I’d find him there. It was raining pretty hard, and we fought, and...he fell over the side, but he managed to grab hold of the edge of the cliff. He asked me to pull him up, and...I didn’t.”

“Bobbi!” Kate says in an alarmed voice. She points to Bobbi’s hand, where the joint has burned down nearly to the end, and it's burning her fingers.

“Oh!” She drops it into a bowl on the table and brings her thumb to her mouth, licking it to cut the sting.

Kate puts out the joint and then looks at Bobbi. “So you let him die? This Phantom guy?”

“I did.” She’s a little wary, wondering how Kate’s going to take the story. Her own teammates were divided on the issue at the time, some of them backing her up, others privately supporting her but unwilling to say so on the record, and a few condemning her outright. She remembers how much it hurt when Clint didn’t understand, when he ignored her reasons and focused only on the fact that she’d broken the rules.

“Good,” Kate says firmly.

It’s a relief to hear. Bobbi doesn’t regret her actions, but it’s unsettling every time a new person finds out, when she has to wait a few seconds to see if they’ll judge her for it. 

A few seconds later, Kate adds, “I haven’t told many people about this, but a few months before the Young Avengers got together, I was atta—assaulted in Central Park.”

A few months before...she must have been, what? Sixteen? Fifteen, even? “Oh, Katie. I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks.” Kate plays with her hands, looking down. “I just wanted to let you know, that, you know...you’re not alone.”

That takes her by surprise, and suddenly she realizes that in all the time since it happened, she’s never spoken about her experience to anyone else who’s been through the same kind of thing. She knows she’s not the only one, not by far, but she never realized how validating it would feel to have someone say it out loud.

Kate looks over at her. “You’re only the third person I’ve told,” she admits.

“It’s hard,” Bobbi says. “I didn’t tell Clint right away. Even when he asked me. I just couldn’t...I didn’t want to be a statistic.”

“Yeah.” Kate nods.

“Not to mention that I didn’t want him to know I’d killed someone.”

“What’d he say when he found out?”

“Oh...he got mad at me for lying and lectured me about how Avengers aren’t supposed to kill.”

Kate’s mouth drops. “No!”

“Yeah. He was all, ‘You can’t be an Avenger if you’re going to run around killing people.’ So...I left.” Kate’s looking seriously distraught, so Bobbi hurries to add, “Don’t worry, he’s apologized since then. We’re good now.”

“Wow.” Kate runs her fingers through her hair and looks up at the ceiling. “Wow,” she repeats. She takes a deep breath, then says, “The internet called you a skank when you left him.”

Of course. “Why am I not surprised,” Bobbi says dryly. Clint was an Avenger longer than she was; he was more established and more famous, so of course complete strangers who had none of the facts would rush to take his side.

“They were really vicious. And then when you died—or everyone thought you died, whatever—they did a complete 180 and made you out to be this saint. That was when I realized how ridiculous it all was, that they were just being sensationalist to get clicks or whatever. So I tried to find out what was real, to put together an accurate picture of you.”

Bobbi looks at her, curious. “What did you find?” 

“Not much. You appeared out of nowhere, helped Hawkeye take down Crossfire, and then the two of you eloped. The only real things I could get were press conference clips and some videos of you in action. There were some interviews with your friends after you—you know.”

She wonders who spoke. What they said about her.

“I felt guilty, too.”

“For what?” 

“I kind of bought into it. The whole ‘skank’ thing? I mean, not that it was an excuse, but I was a pre-teen and I had bad judgment and you were married to my celebrity crush, so there was obviously an element of—” Kate stops in the middle of her sentence. “Oh my God, please don't tell Clint I used to have a crush on him.”

“I won't, as long as you don't tell him that so did I.”

Kate laughs for longer than that joke deserves, then starts to hiccup. 

“Come on,” Bobbi says, patting her on the back. “I'm hungry. Are you hungry? Let's go out to the roof and see what Grills is cooking up.”

It’s already dark when they get out there, and everyone greets them, treating Kate like an old friend. Kate’s been to a quite a few of these evenings by now, and all of Bobbi’s neighbors love her. Tonight, they’re having an argument about the latest episode of Owl Accountants, which is one of those cartoons with a huge adult fandom despite being originally created for kids. Grills plies them with hot dogs, and they sit down next to the conversation.

“It’s a sentimental thing,” Aimee is saying. “The abacus is a family heirloom.”

“Yeah, but Specs isn’t a sentimental character,” Tito argues.

“That’s why it’s such an important moment!”

Tito shakes his head. “No, it’s too jarring. It’s out of character.”

“It’s not out of character,” Kate says, jumping into the conversation. “It’s adding depth.”

“It’s softening her edges to make her more palatable to a mainstream audience, is what it is,” Tito insists.

Bobbi tunes in and out of the conversation for a while until her pocket buzzes. She checks her phone and sees that she has a new text message from an encoded sender. _Eucritta tape leaked. They're sending me to Madripoor to try and contain it, but just in case, wanted to give you a heads up._

Futz.

“What’s that about?” Kate says, leaning over her shoulder.

Bobbi sighs. “It’s Clint. I’ve got to go.”

She wonders about his wording, the way that it looks like he doesn’t assume that she’ll be joining him. True, he’s the one on the tape, but they’d made the decision together back then they were still a couple, and they’d agreed then that they would both deal with the cleanup if this type of thing were to happen. Does he think she’d go back on her word just because they’re not together anymore?

It doesn’t matter; she’s not about to leave him stranded. Even if she didn’t care for his sake, SHIELD wants this handled quietly, and as many talents as Clint has in his repertoire, stealth isn’t one of them. She sends a quick message back: _Count me in._ Then she tosses her paper plate into the garbage bag and says goodbye to her neighbors, apologizing for her rudeness in running out on them.

“It’s all right,” Grills says. “Avengers business comes first. We get it.” The others nod in agreement.

Huh. She didn’t think they knew. She wonders if she should try to deny it, but it’s not like her secret identity is all that secret, these days.

“Good luck, Songbird!” Grills calls behind her.

Kate follows her inside. “Songbird?” she repeats.

“Don’t ask me.” Songbird’s not even an Avenger, technically, but never mind. They go back to Bobbi’s apartment, and she gets a suitcase out from under her bed and starts to pack.

“So,” Kate says from the doorway of Bobbi’s bedroom. “What tape was leaked? Is it a sex tape?”

“What? No.” Bobbi narrows her eyes at her. “Why would he need to go to Madripoor over a leaked sex tape?”

Kate shrugs.

“No, it’s for SHIELD. It’s a...well, it’s classified, but if this video gets out, it’ll be really, really bad.”

“Why? What’s so bad about it?”

Bobbi shakes her head. “You’ve got to take my word for it, kiddo.”

“I’m not a kid.” She hangs back at the doorway watching Bobbi pack, then asks, “What can I do to help?”

“You can stay safe, is what you can do. I know you’re a good fighter, but you don’t want your name mixed up in this, trust me.” Although, if they’re not successful, Kate really will have her name mixed up in it, through no fault of her own, from the dumb luck of calling herself Hawkeye. Maybe Bobbi should advise Kate to get a new superhero name.

“Come on, I can’t sit here and do nothing. What if you die out there? Who’s going to teach me how to do that cool thing where you snap your staves together mid-air and then vault over a bad guy’s head?”

Bobbi smiles despite herself. “Just watch the old videos of me in action a few more times; you'll pick it up. I really do appreciate the offer, but I just can’t involve you in this.”

—

Bobbi and Clint book tickets separately and sit six rows apart, both with aisle seats so that they can keep an eye on the other. Thirty hours later, rubbing the sleep from their eyes, they meet up in the airport and go over the plan. Which is immediately derailed at passport control, when ten heavily armed guards intercept them and lead them down an empty hallway to a room with a door that shuts behind them with a heavy _click_.

It takes under five minutes to render all of the guards unconscious, and then Bobbi and Clint sneak out and try to meld back into the crowd of travelers. There are eyes all over, though, and they leave the airport as quickly as possible, forced to leave their checked weapons behind.

They hurry into a taxi, and Clint sends a final longing glance in the direction of the airport and lets out a mournful sigh.

“It was the arrows or us,” Bobbi says, consoling him with a pat on the shoulder.

She has some cash in her handbag, enough to get them downtown and take care of their basic needs. They get lunch at a noodle bar, and Clint starts stuffing his face the second they sit down.

“Mmmmgood,” he raves in between bites. “So sick of airline food.”

Bobbi grins. “I dunno, that limp salad and microwaved egg we got for breakfast really hit the spot.”

He shudders. “Hey, so what time is it? When do we need to be there?”

Bobbi checks her watch, which she’d adjusted a few minutes before landing. “We’re making good time. “We can go down to the harbor after lunch and be tourist-y.”

“Like a real vacation. To make up for the fact that I never took you anywhere nice while we were together.” He smiles at her. “Get little ‘Madripoor’ shot glasses.”

“That’s not right; didn’t we spend our second anniversary in a sewer?” She laughs.

Clint hangs his head in mock shame.

“Maybe I should get something for Lucky,” she muses.

He quirks his head up. “Who?”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you, did I? I adopted a dog.” She pulls out her phone and finds the picture she took a few weeks ago with Lucky and the pizza slice.

Clint takes the phone from her hand and laughs. “He eats pizza? I love him already. When are you going to introduce me?”

“Oh, I’m sure it’ll happen sooner or later.” The image of him in her home, playing with her dog, hits her full-force and nearly takes her breath away. It’s too much, all of a sudden; she needs to put some distance between them. She takes her phone back and turns back to her food. “So, does Jessica know about the tape?”

“No—well, not exactly,” he answers. “She knows that I’m on assignment for SHIELD, but not the details.”

“Mmmm.” She pokes at her noodles with her chopsticks. “Does she know that I’m here, too?”

His face turns pink. “Of course she does,” he answers, sounding a little defensive.

“And she’s okay with it?”

His voice is tight. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

Bobbi’s not quite sure how to understand her relationship with Jessica Drew. The two of them were both captured by the Skrulls, and when they were on the Avengers together, she thought that they had a sort of bond because of that. She even might have described them as friends at one point. But when Clint started dating Jessica barely a month after splitting from her, she didn’t know what to make of it. Going over the facts in her head over and over again, she finally came to the conclusion that she must have been reading into things that weren’t there. That she’d been wrong to assume that just because she and Jessica had a similar experience also meant they had some sort of relationship beyond that. And any hints of friendship she’d picked up earlier had just been wishful thinking on her part.

“Because I make her uncomfortable,” Bobbi retorts, quoting a conversation she overheard a few months ago when Jessica had complained to Clint about having to work with her. “But I forgot. You know how to handle me.”

He flinches at that, almost imperceptibly, and then takes a few seconds before responding. “Come on, you know I didn’t mean it like that.”

Bobbi raises her eyebrows.

“She was nervous being around you, that’s all. I was just trying to make her feel better.”

“Oh, sure,” she bites out. “Because _my_ feelings don’t matter.” It shouldn’t matter, it was such a small thing, but it still stings that he didn’t defend her. She shouldn’t have expected anything else—sticking up for his ex-wife in front of his new girlfriend would have been a disaster move for him—but reminding herself where his priorities lie protects her from feeling things that she shouldn’t. 

He sighs. “I didn’t know that you could hear us.”

“Oh, well that’s okay, then,” she says sarcastically. She waits a beat, then adds, “Makes me wonder what else you’ve said to her about me when I wasn’t around to make her feel better.”

He looks pained. “Bobbi...”

She’s silent, stewing in her own bitterness for a minute. Then she bursts out, “I didn’t ask for any of this, you know.”

“I—”

“You try surviving for three years on an alien planet where no one looks like you or speaks your language, hiding from a psychopath who wants to emotionally torture you and then kill you, not knowing if you’ll ever get home again...you try living through all of that and see if you come back completely well-adjusted.”

“What does that have to do with—forget it.” Clint stands up and starts to gather his trash. “You want to be mad at me, be mad at me.” 

It seems just a touch too petty to shoot back with, _Fine then, I will_ , so she keeps her mouth shut.

 _I hope you’re happy_ , she tells herself as they leave the restaurant. The vibe from earlier is definitely ruined, the argument leaving a sour taste in her mouth. She’s annoyed with herself for turning a nice lunch into a spat, but at the same time, there’s something cathartic about finally airing this petty grievance. Now that she’s actually said it out loud, the original incident somehow doesn’t bother her as much. Not that she’s about to say so.

They find a public restroom and she starts to build their disguises. Clint’s mouth is set in a thin line as she stands in front of him and adds twenty years to his face with makeup and then colors his hair black with silver streaks. They’re not talking, and it’s uncomfortable, but having her mind on a task makes it easier, and it’s a good distraction from worrying about what will happen if their mission fails.

She takes a step back when she finishes, giving him a once-over. It’s a good job; his face is nearly unrecognizable. “Take a look,” she tells him.

He turns around and checks himself out in the mirror, then does a double take. “That’s me?” he says, poking his finger at the glass to make sure. “What a trip.”

She does her own disguise next, and then she gives him a few tips on how to make slight adjustments to his posture to make him look less like himself. When they’re ready, they use the last of their cash to take a taxi over to the Madripoor Pearl hotel, where the auction is scheduled to take place that night. They enter the building ten minutes apart and wander around the casino, making sure to keep each other in sight. She walks past Wilson Fisk, who doesn’t give her a second glance, and notices Madame Hydra at the Baccarat table with Tombstone and Crimson Cowl. There are a lot of people in this room who’d like to see her and Clint dead, and their best bet is to make sure to keep their identities hidden as long as possible. Once the auction actually starts, they should be safe—the organizations that run these events are always strict about propriety and order during the proceedings.

Everything goes smoothly for a while, until she overhears a man in a suit say, “They’ll send Barton.” Clint jerks his head towards the voice, just slightly, and then he freezes as he realizes he’s given them away. He gives her a sheepish look that says he knows what he did and he’s very, very sorry.

She’s not surprised when the rest of them show up, at least a dozen men in black sunglasses and suits, subtly pointing guns in their direction. Since the room is full of civilians in addition to the potential buyers, they don’t have a choice other than to follow them out without putting up a fight. Once they reach the hallway, Bobbi considers making a move, but before she can do anything, something is pressed against her back, and a strong jolt of electricity is sent into her body, knocking her unconscious.

—

She wakes up in a chair with her hands tied behind her back. The rope holding her in place doesn’t give when she tests it, so whoever’s responsible must know about her upgraded strength.

Blinking a few times, Bobbi starts to take note of her surroundings. She’s in a conference room, and Clint’s in a chair next to her. The men who brought her there are standing around, waiting for something.

“They’re awake,” someone says.

One of the men walks up to Bobbi and leans down, getting in her face. He gives her a scrutinizing look, like he’s not quite sure she is who he thinks she is.

Bobbi decides to go with it. “I demand to speak with your manager,” she says haughtily in a voice not her own. “What is the meaning of this?”

He pulls off his sunglasses and squints at her, then turns to the guy next to him. “Are we sure we’ve got the right guys? These don’t look like them.”

“Oh, it’s them,” a voice says from behind. Footsteps approach, and Madame Masque comes into view. She’s holding a package of makeup wipes, and she takes one out and cleans off part of Bobbi’s face while Bobbi tries not to flinch. She holds up the filthy wipe and hands it off to the underling who expressed doubt. “The magic of makeup.”

It crosses Bobbi’s mind to wonder how much use Masque actually has for makeup, given that she’s always wearing the mask, but she keeps her mouth shut.

“Now, then.” Masque turns back to her and Clint. “Did you really think you would be able to steal that tape out from underneath all our noses?”

“We’re not here to steal it,” Clint says. “We’re here to buy it.”

Masque laughs. “With what money?” she asks. To Bobbi, she adds, “I went through your purse. Forty dollars isn’t even enough to cover your seats.”

“Oh, that?” Bobbi says. “That's just pocket change.”

“So you’re planning to write out an I.O.U.?” Masque scoffs.

Bobbi and Clint exchange a glance.

Masque looks between them. “A credit card,” she guesses, her voice triumphant. “Where is it?”

Bobbi smirks.

Masque nods. “Of course. Whatever would we do without bras.”

“They might need to start giving us pockets,” Bobbi shoots back.

“You understand that I’ll need to confiscate this card,” Masque says to her. She puts one hand on Bobbi’s shoulder and reaches down her shirt with the other.

Clint jerks violently in his chair. “Get your hands off of her!” 

Masque makes an exasperated sound. “Relax, Barton, I'm not here to manhandle your wife.”

“I'm not his—” Bobbi starts.

At the same time, Clint says, “She's not my—”

“I don't care,” Masque interrupts. She pulls the card out efficiently and cleanly, then hands it to one of her henchman. “Get this checked out.” Then she turns back to them. “So, now that I have the means to purchase the tape, is there a reason to keep the two of you alive?”

“The tape won’t be worth anything if we’re dead,” Bobbi says. “Then you’ll have gone to all this trouble for nothing.”

“Could be worth it, though.” Masque fingers the blade in her hand and then draws it carefully along Bobbi’s collar. “But from what I hear, it’s only Barton on this tape. So who does it hurt if I just...kill the spare?”

“Are you—” Clint says, sounding floored, “Are you quoting Harry Potter and casting _yourself_ as Voldemort? You see yourself as Voldemort and you’re still going through with this?”

“Shut up,” Masque snaps. “It’s just a line.”

Clint snorts.

“SHIELD’s monitoring our heart rates,” Bobbi lies. Masque turns to her, and she adds, “If our hearts stop beating, the card is automatically canceled.”

“Wow. That’s cold.” Masque actually sounds a little rattled. “I mean, I know it’s SHIELD, but that’s...anyway.” She motions at a group of henchmen. “Bring them to their rooms.”

Two suit-and-sunglasses bros approach them, stun guns out.

“Oh, come on,” Clint groans.

—

She wakes up in a dark room, still tied to the chair, but on her side, on the floor, her cheek pressed into the carpet in a puddle of drool. There’s faint moonlight coming in through the thin curtains, and with her new and improved senses, she can make out a door next to the dresser, connecting her room with the adjoining one.

Clint’s voice comes through the crack under the door. “Bobbi? Can you hear me?”

Bobbi shuffles closer and tries to look underneath, but it’s too dark to see anything. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“I can’t move,” he says, his voice panicky. “They’ve got me tied up really well.”

“Same here.” She tests the restraints again, just to make sure. “They must have used a special blend for the ropes.”

“Do you think Masque is going to kill us once she gets the tape?”

“I don’t...” Bobbi trails off and changes the subject, not wanting to consider the prospect. Worrying won’t help, anyway. “If we keep at it, I’m sure we can wear the ropes down before they come back.”

For the next few minutes, the only sound she hears is the creaking of rope against their chairs. There’s a little slack for her to work with, but the rope is strong, and it’ll take a while before it starts to fray.

Clint speaks again. “Hey, Bobbi?”

She takes a break from moving her hands back and forth. “Yeah?”

“Are you scared?”

Scared means that she’s considering the possibility of failure, which she’s not ready to do. “Let’s just focus,” she says.

“Right.”

He doesn’t say anything else, and after a few seconds, she blurts out, “I’m sorry I picked a fight with you.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t stick up for you,” he answers.

She picks up the pace with her hands. “Come on. Let's get out of this mess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for non-graphic recounting of sexual assault.  
> (Go back [to the top of the page](/works/17909888/chapters/43189769#notes).)


	5. We Can't Rewind, We've Come Too Far

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobbi and Clint fight for their lives—and reputations—in Madripoor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title, like the last one, is taken from The Buggles’ [Video Killed the Radio Star](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwuy4hHO3YQ).

Bobbi doesn’t know how long she’s been working at the rope binding her hands to the chair. Her wrists chafe, her mouth is dry, and she’s had the song “Whistle While You Work” stuck in her head so long that it’s probably permanently embedded there.

Without warning, a group of ninjas spring from the shadows, swords out. Bobbi rolls out of the way of a blade and uses her unbound feet as well as the back of the chair to deflect attacks. She hears thumping sounds coming from the next room, indicating that they’re after Clint as well.

It’s not easy to dodge the blows while she’s both restrained and outnumbered. Her movements are clumsy and barely effective, and she’s unable to do anything when her chair gets picked up and thrown across the room at the window. She crashes through the glass, into the night air.

She falls backward, facing the sky, and sees that they’ve done the same thing to Clint, who’s falling a few feet above her, looking down at her in panic. His mouth is open in a scream, but she can’t hear anything over the deafening wind.

This is it. She’s about to die, her body ending up a broken heap on a Madripoor sidewalk. _Are you scared?_ She’s surprised, that’s for sure. She really thought that she was going to be young forever, that she would outlive and mourn all her friends and family and eventually become as embittered and cynical as Dom is, but it looks like that’s not to be her fate after all.

She and Clint lock eyes, and she tries to bring to mind the good times, the highlights that made her life worth living. But then her brother’s face pops into her mind, and she realizes that she never mended fences with him, and now it’s too late.

All this happens in the space of less than a second, and suddenly she feels herself being plucked right out of the air. She lands on a surface, the wind knocked out of her, but she’s alive, somehow.

“Hold still,” a voice says. She feels tension against her wrists, and suddenly, she’s free, if a bit woozy. She looks up at Daisy Johnson’s face. Confused, Bobbi takes note of her surroundings and realizes that she’s on a SHIELD hoverflier. There’s a second hoverflier next to them, piloted by Maria Hill, with Clint on it.

“You okay?” Daisy asks.

Bobbi catches her breath and nods. “Yeah. Wow. Thank—”

“Good,” Daisy interrupts her, reaching underneath her seat and handing Bobbi the battle staves she’d left behind at the airport. “Watch out for the ninjas.”

What? They couldn’t have possibly—

But they have. They’re jumping out the window after them without any regard for their own lives, single-minded in their mission. Bobbi almost feels bad fighting them off, since there’s literally nowhere for them to go but down, but she doesn’t have a choice; it’s her or them.

One after another, eventually they all fall down. Bobbi winces as the very last one of them falls to his death, looking away before the impact. She sees that Clint has also finished off his attackers, so it looks like they're safe, at least for the time being.

She turns to Daisy, trying to catch her breath. “That was some timing.”

“Always good to be prepared,” Daisy responds with a salute. “Come on. We've got one more stop to make.” She steers the hoverflier downward to one of the lower hotel floors, settling right outside a crowded hall. Bobbi looks inside and sees Kate—the very last person she expected to see _here_ —held in place by a few of Madame Masque’s henchmen, surrounded by A.I.M. agents and various other bad guys.

“She did it,” Daisy says, getting Bobbi’s attention. “She used your card and won the auction. It was an ingenious plan, setting up you and Clint as decoys and having Kate sneak in on the side and impersonate Madame Masque. No one was expecting her.”

Yes, no one was. Except that Daisy seems to think that Bobbi was in on this plan. Kate must have...wait, that was _Kate_ interrogating and threatening them? Little Katie?

Daisy's looking at her, expecting a response. “Oh,” Bobbi says, “well...it was Kate’s idea.” This is, technically, not a lie.

That’s when Kate looks up and sees them. Kate grins at her, and Bobbi throws a stave right through the window of the ballroom, and then she and Clint crash through.

Kate pulls away from her guards and runs over to them. “Oh my God, you guys,” she says in greeting. “You will never believe the day I had!”

They run like hell to the other side of the room, knocking down henchmen right and left. The good thing about being in a hall full of bad guys means that no one’s shooting at them, in fear of hitting their own people.

“Where’s the tape?” Bobbi asks once they reach the hallway.

“This way!” Kate leads them to the staircase and turns to Clint. “Grappling arrow?”

Wordlessly, he hands her his bow and gives her an arrow out of his quiver. She sets her eye on the railing a few flights up, takes the shot, and they all grab onto each other as the line pulls them up.

They get to their feet on the landing, and then a thought occurs to Bobbi. “Hey, if you’re here, who’s watching Lucky?” she asks.

“He’s with my sister,” Kate answers. “She loves dogs. Come on, this way.” She leads them down the empty hallway to one of the hotel rooms. The door is open, and the inside looks like the aftermath of a fight. There’s a knife sticking out of the mattress and a torn sheet wrapped around a chair, and one of the legs of the dresser seems to have been sliced clear off.

Kate goes over to the television and ejects a tape from one of the boxes underneath. She turns to Clint and hands it over. Acidly, she adds, “You’re a futzing hypocrite, by the way.”

So she’s watched it. Bobbi can’t blame her, though she wishes she hadn’t.

Clint glances between Kate and the tape. “I’m sorry you had to see that.” His voice is quiet, and he doesn’t defend himself against the accusation.

“You killed Du Ke Feng,” Kate continues, pointing at him while she speaks. “You _shot_ him through the eyes with a couple of arrows, but when _she_ —” Kate jerks her thumb in Bobbi’s direction, “—you—you had the gall to judge her—”

“Kate,” Bobbi interrupts. “We need to get out of here.”

She catches a glimpse of Clint’s face; he looks stricken. As much as it hurts her to see him that way, she has to remind herself that his feelings—in particular, his feelings about something she’s already forgiven him for—aren’t her responsibility. And anyway, they don’t have time to deal with it right now.

Madame Masque is waiting in the hallway, pointing a gun at them. “I believe we have unfinished business, little girl,” she says to Kate.

“RUN!” Bobbi yells, pushing Kate and Clint in front of her. They take off down the hallway, Masque spraying bullets after them. Bobbi feels one go into her shoulder and another graze her side.

“You got another grappling arrow in there?” Kate asks Clint.

“Yeah, as long as we make it there!” he shouts back.

By the time they’ve reached the stairs, Bobbi’s lost count of how many bullets she’s taken. Spots start to dance in front of her eyes, but she tries to ignore them. She slams the stairwell door shut behind them, and Clint leans over with some cord from his quiver and does something to the door closer to jam it shut. Then he pulls out a grappling arrow, as well as his bow. “Grab on,” he tells her and Kate.

Bobbi takes a step in his direction, but she stumbles and lands on her knees. The spots in her vision are getting bigger.

“Bobbi?” Kate says. It sounds like she’s speaking from far away.

 _No, I’m fine,_ she tries to reassure her, and then the spots take over and everything goes dark.

—

The first thing she notices when she wakes up is the air conditioner. She’s lying down on her back, wearing a hospital gown, and she’s freezing.

She blinks her eyes open and takes a look around. She’s in one of the helicarrier clinic rooms. Clint and Kate are sitting in chairs near the door, with Hill, Daisy, and Nick Fury Jr. standing over them. There’s a blanket at the foot of her bed, which Bobbi reaches for. The movement catches Kate’s attention, and she jumps up. “You’re awake!”

“Yeah, and I’m really futzing thirsty.” She covers herself with the blanket and eyes the sink across the room longingly. “What’s up? What’d I miss?”

Kate goes over to the sink and brings her a cup of water. “You got shot, like, a thousand times and passed out.”

“Oh.” _Well, at least it wasn't a concussion this time._

“You had so many bullet holes in you, if any of those stitches come loose while you’re drinking, we could use you as a lawn sprinkler,” Daisy adds.

Bobbi takes a sip and grimaces. “That’s...very graphic.” She slides the neck of her hospital gown off her shoulder to see the bandage there, presumably covering a line of stitches. “Did it work, at least?”

“The leak was found and sealed off,” Hill confirms.

Kate’s ears prick up. “Leak?” 

Hill and Fury explain the full story to her—that Feng was indeed killed by a team of Navy SEALs, for once the official story being the full truth, and that the tape she’d watched of Clint shooting him was doctored, for the purpose of smoking out a mole in SHIELD, a low-level agent who'd been hoping to make a profit off the names of the people actually involved in the assassination.

Kate frowns through the explanation, and she barely waits for Fury to finish speaking before blurting out, “Are you kidding me? I had Madame Masque promising to put out a pack of cigarettes on my face over fake footage? Bobbi and Clint got tossed out a window for some smoke and mirrors?”

“They saved the agents who actually carried out the operation,” Fury points out. “If their identities had gotten out, they would be targets. Their families and friends would be targets.”

“Hawkeye and Mockingbird are public figures,” Clint adds. “The guys that actually did this—they’re not. They don’t have the resources to keep their loved ones safe.”

Kate’s mouth flattens, but she doesn’t say argue back.

A few minutes later, Daisy, Fury, and Hill leave, promising a doctor will be in to check on her later. Once they’re gone, Bobbi turns to Kate. “So, thanks for the save,” she says. “I mean, for your own sake, you should have stayed put—” Kate rolls her eyes, “—but if you had, the real Masque might have just shot us on the spot, and even if she hadn't, Hill definitely would have murdered us if we’d allowed the tape to get out, so, you know...thanks for saving our asses.”

A hint of a smile breaks through Kate’s facade. “S’my specialty.”

“You might come to regret being on SHIELD’s radar, though,” Bobbi adds. She holds up her cup. “Any chance I can get a refill? This air conditioner is killing me.”

“Yeah, it’s the air conditioner, not the nine bullet holes,” Clint quips, taking it away from her and walking over to the sink.

While he fills up the cup, Bobbi sends Kate a meaningful look and then jerks her head in Clint’s direction. Kate shoots an uncomfortable look at his back, then clears her throat, causing him to look up. “Um,” she says, digging her foot into the carpet. “Sorry I called you a hypocrite.”

Clint turns off the water, then walks back. “Don’t be,” he responds, ruffling Kate’s hair. He looks at Bobbi. “I’m glad she has someone sticking up for her.”

As he hands her the water, Bobbi suddenly remembers that the last thought she had while falling to (what she thought was) her death was of Ben, and it occurs to her that Clint might have contact information for him. She doesn’t have anything up-to-date on her family, but Clint had Twitchy dig up all that information on them, and maybe he has their numbers somewhere in that file. 

“Hey,” she says.

Clint looks up. “What's up?”

Kate's looking over too, not even pretending not to be listening. Bobbi opens her mouth, and then she hears Ben's voice in her head, the last words she heard from him: _As long as you keep running around in tights, playing super-spy, that's the life you chose. But keep us out of it._

“Bobbi?” Clint prompts.

She swallows around the lump in her throat. “Um. Nothing, just...thanks for the water.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I was considering adding footnotes to each chapter for references to canon sources, but I'm wondering if that would end up being more distracting than useful. What do you think?


	6. I Wanna Be Sedated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter has arrived, and with it come angry Russians, grumpy utility guys, infuriating mercenaries, and lots and lots of packing boxes. Featuring an appearance by special guest star Tony Stark!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long to get this up! I ended up cutting the chapter in half, which means that the next chapter will be part of this story’s arc (which, like Hawkeye issue #6, is told out of order, which means you’ll want to pay attention to the dates in both chapters).
> 
> Chapter title comes from the lyrics to The Ramones’ [I Wanna Be Sedated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm51ihfi1p4).

**December 13**

“So, this is really it, huh?” Fortune says. He picks up the needle from its case, then quickly returns it as Bobbi glares at him. “My last treatment. Once this is done, I’ll be back to full health?”

“That’s the plan,” Bobbi confirms. “As long as you don’t go and get yourself decapitated. The serum’s not _that_ powerful.”

He quirks a grin. “You know, I appreciate this, Morse, I really do.”

He’d better. She’s been working on this thing for months, ever since he let her in on his true motivations for seeking her out when she was putting together the World Counterterrorism Agency after her return to Earth. For her and her fellow ex-SHIELD agents, the WCA was a way to find a place in a world that had seemingly moved on without them and to do some good at the same time.

Bobbi hadn’t really understood why Dom had signed up until she started pressing him about his strange health fluctuations, and he’d admitted that a few years ago, he’d come across her Project Gladiator team’s old experimental formula for a super soldier serum and used it on himself, and now it was starting to break down, taking his body along with it. As it turned out, he’d looked her up in the hopes that he’d be able to convince her to make an improved version of the formula to save his life.

She’d been furious when she’d first found out, pride stung at being lied to and manipulated, but the truth was that despite his deception (and his _unrelenting_ flirting), he’d always been a reliable teammate. And she’d been itching to get back into the lab after a long absence, anyway. As soon as she’d had some free time, she’d locked herself in the WCA lab for a week to start working on a solution.

“Well, I feel kind of responsible,” Bobbi admits. “After all, it was based on my team’s half-finished research that you did this to yourself in the first place. Come here.”

He sits down on the stool in front of her, laying his arm palm up on the table. Bobbi wipes his arm with an alcohol wipe and then picks up the needle.

“You ready?” she asks.

Dom nods.

“Here goes.” Bobbi slides the needle into his forearm and injects the serum. She presses a cotton ball into his skin as she pulls the needle back out. “I’m not sure why you wanted this so badly, anyway. From the way you speak about it, outliving all of your friends and family sounds more like a curse than a blessing.”

“Yeah, well, I already got that part over with,” Dom responds with his usual cynicism. “Doesn’t mean I’m ready to die. And if I do die, I’d rather have it like you said—a clean decapitation, not having my body break down like a rotting tree while I’m still conscious.”

That wasn’t quite what she’d meant, but she can’t argue with that. She stands up and starts disposing of the supplies. “Call me if you start to feel…well, anything out of the ordinary, okay?”

“Right,” Dom agrees. “I guess we won’t be seeing each other anymore otherwise, huh?”

Bobbi stops what she’s doing and looks over at him. There’s something in his expression that she can’t describe. He really is a man out of time—in a different way than, say, Captain America and Nick Fury are. Fury tries to pretend he’s a jaded loner, but there are a handful of people who know better: Daisy Johnson, Dum-Dum Dugan, Sharon Carter, Natasha Romanoff, and Bobbi herself. Nick and Steve work so well in the modern world, even after outliving their old friends, because they love the world. They create roots and connections wherever and whenever they go, continuing to live and love even as their old friends die off. Dom isn’t like that; he holds himself back and has done so, as far as she knows, ever since his wife died. Bobbi’s known him for nearly two years now and has been sleeping with him for months, and she still wouldn’t consider herself his friend.

She wonders what she’ll be like when she’s that age. Will she be a Fury or a Fortune?

“I guess we won’t,” she finally says.

He nods. “No reason to.”

“Right.”

“You’ve got your work, I’ve got mine,” Dom continues.

“I’m more of an Avenger than a spy these days,” Bobbi agrees. “Not much call for mercenaries in that business.”

“Of course.”

Bobbi swallows as she stares at him and he looks back at her. She should leave—no, wait, _he_ should leave, this is her lab. Their professional relationship is at an end, and there’s no need—

They rush at each other at the same time, mouths meeting as Dom slides his hands up the backs of her thighs and lifts her onto the table. Bobbi wraps her legs around him and pulls his head down to her neck, quickly divesting herself of her lab coat.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” she says, gasping as he bites the sensitive skin on her collarbone, then soothes it with his tongue.

“It never does,” he agrees.

She starts unbuttoning his shirt. “Glad we’re on the same page. Now, let’s desanitize my lab.”

——

**December 18**

“Thanks for coming,” Bobbi says. “I’ve been trying to get this finished for so long, but something else always comes up. I figured that if I asked for help, I’d feel a sense of accountability, and then maybe I’d make some progress.”

“Well, accountability is my middle name.” Tony winks and makes his way past her into the apartment. He takes a quick look around, long enough for Bobbi to note how out of place Tony Stark and his suit and tie look in her Brooklyn one-bedroom apartment. To his credit, he doesn’t say something along the lines of, _How can you prefer to live here than in the Avengers Mansion?_

Lucky approaches Tony, wagging his tail, and Tony leans down to pet him. “And who is this good boy?” he asks.

“This is Lucky,” Bobbi introduces him. “Also known as Pizza Dog.”

Tony squats down and continues showering Lucky with affection. “That’s a good name, yes it is.”

With a fond smile, Bobbi shakes her head. “Come on, Shellhead, the boxes await.” She leads him into the spare bedroom where the cardboard packing boxes are waiting, piled one on top of the other nearly up to her head.

“I thought you said you’d been living here for half a year,” Tony says. “If all this stuff hasn’t been unpacked yet, are you sure you really need it?”

“Oh, no.” Bobbi wags her finger at him. “You’re not getting out of this that easily.”

Tony grins. “It was worth a try.”

They start going through the boxes, finding some smaller kitchen appliances including a garlic press that Bobbi has sorely missed, as well as camping equipment, assorted computer cables, and loose change.

“What’s this?” Tony asks, picking up a shoebox. “Feels too heavy to be—oh!” He’s opened the box without waiting for an answer, finding a whole stack of photos. He picks up the first picture in the stack. “Oh my God, this is the old Compound, isn’t it? Are these all pictures from our West Coast Avengers days?”

She looks over his shoulder. “I think so, yeah.”

“I’ve never seen these,” he says, starting to go through the box. “Were they in storage in the Mansion? When you were, you know...” he draws a line across his throat.

“I wasn’t dead, but yes.” Bobbi takes the discarded photos and starts looking through them herself. The next photo is her, Clint, Greer and Rhodey hanging out on the beach in their swimsuits with a sunset in the background. It’s practically a silhouette shot, the four of them outlined against an orange and pink sky with the waves rolling in behind them.

“That one is gorgeous,” Tony says, looking over her shoulder.

She remembers the day this was taken. It was late summer, a few months after the team started up, before Tony joined. They’d been celebrating a successful defense against an attack from the Wrecking Crew. There had been a barbecue, of course, and eventually they’d made their way down to the beach. Bobbi remembers showing off some of the surfing skills she’d retained from her West Coast childhood. She remembers Tigra writing “WACKOS 4EVER” in huge letters in the sand, and she remembers how they played frisbee-with-powers until it was too dark for everyone except Tigra to see anything.

Tony holds the picture up to eye level. “You should frame this one.”

Bobbi blinks a couple of times, then puts the stack of photos back in the shoebox. “Nah, you can barely make out our faces.” She turns away from him as she sets the box down on a side table. “Come on, we’ve got all these boxes to get through.”

“Right.” Tony looks around and sighs. “How is it possible that we’ve been at this for over an hour and have only unpacked, like, a box and a half?”

“Now you get it,” she says, feeling vindicated. “Unpacking is a lot harder than it sounds.”

“Let’s just throw out all of these boxes and buy new stuff,” he suggests. “It’s got to be easier.”

She’d consider it, but there’s a lot of sentimental stuff in there. Boxes of memories—one day, that’ll be all she has of her current life. Tony and all the rest of them will be dead, and she’ll still be here. Then she’ll be glad she hasn’t thrown everything away.

She doesn’t say that, though. Instead, she points to two of the boxes in the pile. “Let’s just get these open and call it a day. The rest of them can survive a little while longer in the closet.”

"No way," Tony says. "You invited me over to hold you accountable, right? We're not quitting until every one of these boxes is empty."

“Okay, okay,” she relents. He’s a good friend. “You’ve got me.”

“I wouldn’t say no to a pizza break, though,” Tony admits.

Lucky picks up his head and wags his tail.

——

**December 17**

Today, Bobbi is going to finish unpacking. It’s a little embarrassing how long she’s been in this apartment, and she still has a whole bunch of sealed cardboard boxes. She’s been content to leave everything in its box until she has a need for specific things that are still packed away, like the popcorn maker she just brought out last week. She’s booked a few hours this afternoon with nothing else to do, and she’s finally going to tackle the boxes.

As she gets the last box into the living room, the doorbell rings. Lucky barks and runs to the door. “Down!” Bobbi calls, setting the box down and walking over. Lucky sits, resting his face on his front paws, and Bobbi opens the door to see Simone and her kids along with a middle-aged man in a navy jumpsuit.

“What’s up?” Bobbi asks.

Simone looks tired, one child on her hip and the other one angrily crossing his arms in the background. “We’ve got a building problem.”

Oooh, her first crisis as a landlord that doesn’t involve anyone getting knocked unconscious. How refreshing.

Simone continues, “The TV’s out, and Mr. Cable Guy here refuses to fix it.”

Bobbi looks over at the guy. “Is that your real name? Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

He doesn't laugh. "I already _explained_ to Ms. Wallace over here about the difference between equipment _failure_ and equipment _damage_ and how the liability don’t _cover_ —"

"Wait, sorry,” Bobbi interrupts. “Damage?”

Simone and Cable Guy nod in unison.

Ah, shit. “Is there...an arrow in it?”

“Yup,” The guy says.

“Okay, that’s on me,” Bobbi admits. Well, technically, it’s on Kate, but Kate’s being there is on her, so close enough. She presses the heel of her hand against her temple to help her think. "Okay, here's what we'll do. Do you have replacement equipment?" 

"Yes, but like I _said_ , it's not my—“

"Don't worry about it," she interrupts. "Leave the equipment in the front hall. I’ll take care of it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks suspiciously.

“It means, I'll take care of it,” Bobbi says curtly. She sends him away, leaving Simone and her kids at the door. “Come inside,” she says. “Your boys like Owl Accountants? I’ve got the first half of the season on DVR.”

She clears some of the boxes out of the way, makes popcorn, and then gets dressed to go out, putting on a thick winter coat and heavy boots. Simone looks up as Bobbi comes out of the bedroom. “Where are you going in this weather?” she asks.

Bobbi points upward. “That’s my responsibility,” she says.

“What? Now?” Simone looks shocked. “It’s icy up there. You’ll slip and break your N-E-C-K!”

“That spells ‘neck!’” Charlie puts in helpfully.

“Thanks, honey,” Simone says, shaking her head. “Bobbi, don’t be crazy. The dish can wait for another day.”

“I own it, I broke it, I’m fixing it. You’ve got to make your own stuff work.” She gets a toolbox and some other equipment out of the front closet, then turns back to Simone and adds, “Don’t worry about me; I’ve faced down much scarier things in my life than an icy roof.”

Simone huffs, but she doesn’t argue any further. Bobbi leaves her and the boys with the show playing. She picks up the replacement equipment from the hallway and stuffs it into a backpack, then heads up toward the roof.

She gets into a climbing harness, tying a rope through the harness and looping the other end around a pipe, then starts climbing out to the satellite dish. The roof has a few icy patches, so she makes sure to move slowly, carefully. This getup will prevent her from falling to the street, but she can still slip and hit her head up here.

When she reaches the dish, she pulls the arrow out and tosses it onto the patio, then inspects the damage. There are some shredded wires, but she thinks she can figure out where everything goes.

She works slowly and methodically for the better part of an hour. It takes a few redos, and she slips and lands clumsily on her butt more than once, but eventually she has something that looks like a functional satellite dish.

“My hero,” Simone says drily as Bobbi walks back in. “Glad you’re still in one piece.”

“Hey, if Ultron can’t stop me, what’s this thing going to do?” Bobbi retorts, holding up the old dish. She looks around and sees that the kids have all fallen asleep on the couch. “Feel free to stay as long as you like.” She sets the broken equipment down in an empty spot in the hallway, and her glance falls on the cardboard boxes, her original afternoon plans. Ugh. She really wanted to have that done today.

“What are you up to?” Simone asks. “Want to watch some deconstructed children’s television?”

Bobbi sends a guilty look in the way of the boxes. “Yeah, sure. That sounds good.”

——

**December 14**

They say there’s a first for everything, and this is definitely Bobbi’s first barbecue in the snow. She’s out on the roof with the rest of the building—or at least the ones crazy enough to come out in this weather. The snow is turning to slush under their feet, with a huge puddle by the grill.

“Hey, Bobbi!” Grills calls out, waving her down. He’s turning over the hot dogs, fingers exposed in cut-off gloves. “I wanted to thank you for helping out my dad with the basement the other week.”

Bobbi nods, trying to be polite but uncomfortable with the praise. She did put in a not-insignificant amount of effort driving out to Long Island to clear out his father’s basement before the storm flooded the place, but it was just as much for her as it was for him—the act of being useful in a small, everyday kind of way, as opposed to the grand superhero battles, helps settle her in a world where she sometimes feels lost. She settles on responding with, “Just being a good neighbor.”

“Oh, it’s more than that.” Grills puts down his tongs, then reaches behind him and picks up a DVR box. “Anyway, merry Christmas, kiddo. It’s pre-loaded. I heard you’re running behind on Owl Accountants. That maybe your unpredictable job hours have caused you to miss an episode here and there.”

“Wow, that’s really thoughtful,” Bobbi says, touched. He’s not technically supposed to know that she’s an Avenger—none of them are—but there’s nothing she can really do about that now.

“You deserve it,” he declares. “Enjoy your show, Songbird.”

Again! “Songbird?” she repeats.

Grills winks. “It's all right, Morse, you don't gotta hide your ID from us.”

“I know, but...I'm Mockingbird.”

“Yeah!” His eyes take on an excited glint. “I know all about how Mockingbird is just Songbird in disguise. Read it in the news, how you faked your own death and took on a new identity to gain redemption for the crimes of your youth! Very brave, if you ask me.”

The weird thing about that is that it’s more plausible than the truth. Bobbi’s still trying to decide whether to correct him or not when she hears Aimee calling her name.

“What's up?” she asks, turning around. 

Aimee looks nervous. "Uh, I don't know if you're the right person to speak to about this, but there are a whole bunch of guys downstairs…with bats."

Tracksuit bros. Bobbi feels for the staves she’s got hidden in the sleeves of her coats. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll handle them.”

"Go get 'em!" Grills's voice calls out behind her. 

Songbird. Huh.

She snaps the staves together and extends them just as she steps out the front door, and wow, there really are a zillion of them here. Where the hell does Ivan get all of these guys?

One guy, in the center, kind of looks like he’s in charge. Everyone is looking at him out of the corner of their eyes, waiting for a signal of some sort.

He addresses Bobbi. “Our boss, he wants to talk to you, bro.”

She looks around at the crowd of red and white tracksuits and wooden bats. “What happened, he get lost on the way or something?”

The guy doesn’t smile. He motions to the rest of them, and they start to approach her, bats raised. Even with her fighting skills, Bobbi knows she can’t take all of them, but if she has to lose a fight, she’s going to make at least a handful of them reconsider their career choices while she does it. With her pole to hold them off, she takes down a dozen and a half quickly, but one guy gets in a lucky swing, which slows her down. She keeps fighting as they move in, dealing out as much damage as she can, but more of them keep coming.

The Tracksuit Mafia must have amazing health insurance.

There’s blood running down her head, mixing in with her sweat, getting in her eyes and dimming her sight. Tracksuits from every possible direction, falling, getting up, swinging—she kicks one square in the chest and he and all the guys behind him go flying at the same moment that a bat hits her skull from behind, and she knows the fight is over.


	7. Before I Go Insane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tracksuit Mafia makes Bobbi an offer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! It's been a while, but I'm still working on this. Just had to slow down my pace because of other responsibilities.
> 
> Like the last chapter, this chapter's title is taken from the Ramones' [I Wanna Be Sedated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm51ihfi1p4).

**December 15**

This whole waking-up-tied-to-a-chair thing is starting to get real old. That’s her first thought.

Her next one is, _Jess is going to kill me,_ before realizing that this isn’t Avengers business, and there’s no need for Jess to find out. Unless they end up killing her, but then she won’t need to worry about _Jess_ killing her because she’ll already be—

“She’s awake,” one of the guys says.

The room is pretty dark, and she can only make out shapes. Eight, maybe ten guys. She's bound to the chair by regular rope, and it’d probably snap if she gave it her all. Some of them might be armed, but she can take a few bullets if she needs to.

Still, they went through all the trouble to bring her here—might as well hear them out.

There’s a man standing in front of her, old and thin, wearing striped sunglasses and a flat cap backwards like he thinks he’s Samuel L. Jackson. He leans on a white cane and looks at her face. “Bro, you awake?”

She sits up as straight as possible within the confines of the ropes and looks him in the eyes, trying to look like she’s completely unfazed by the situation. “I am, thanks.”

“You in big trouble, bro,” he continues. She starts to say something sarcastic, but he cuts her off by poking her toe with his cane, which she finds incredibly rude. He drones on for a few minutes, talking about Ivan and the building and someone’s wife and stealing a boat, how the people he works for are very, very angry and it’s not a good idea to cross them, Bro, because they don’t have the kind of mercy that he and Ivan have showed so far.

“I dunno, they sound kind of lazy to me,” Bobbi cracks. “Sending all of you out to deliver their message instead of facing me themselves?”

“They’re done delivering messages,” the old guy says harshly. “The last one is this: you go away. You have 24 hours to be gone, out of building, out of neighborhood, or we move in, is war. Whole building, dead. Little babies? Dead. You don’t want to see war, bro.”

Before the threat has time to sink in, there’s another bat to the back of her head. This one’s not as hard as the last one, and it doesn’t knock her out, but she slumps in her seat anyway, playing possum. Someone does a half-assed job of tying a cloth over her eyes, and she’s thrown unceremoniously over a pair of shoulders and carried around for a few minutes before being tossed in the backseat of a car. The whole experience involves a lot of bumping and jostling, but she’s had worse. And she can see pretty well out the window from this angle. She makes a mental note of the street signs. Little Irkutsk; she should have known.

She wants to start making a plan, but she can’t concentrate on anything but the rumbling of the car. Eventually, they pull up in front of her building. The car door opens and someone grabs underneath her arms and drags her along the sidewalk to the front stoop, then leaves her there without a word. Bobbi resists the urge to get up, counting a good ten seconds after she hears the car drive off before sitting up and pulling away the blindfold.

She hears footsteps on the stairs, and Aimee runs out to her, her face white in panic. “Oh my God, Bobbi!” she cries out. “I’m so sorry, I had no idea—I thought you were dead—I called the police—”

Bobbi cuts her off with a hand. “I’m okay, really. It’s okay. They mostly just drove me around Brooklyn and talked me to sleep.”

Aimee doesn’t seem comforted. “That’s some way of putting it. You were _abducted_!”

Abducted. Sure, some people might call it that. But, honestly, if she isn’t taken off-planet, or at least trapped in a different century, does it really count as an abduction?

“Occupational hazard,” Bobbi tells her, using the railing to pull herself to a standing position. She can practically hear Aimee’s heartbeat pounding in fear, so she puts a hand on her shoulder, trying to reassure her. “Don’t worry. It’s worse than it looks. I’ve got it under control.”

A complete lie.

“What did they want?” Aimee asks, her breathing slowing to something approaching normal.

Bobbi debates telling her. She doesn’t want to cause a panic in the building, but she doesn’t want to leave them in the dark, either. She needs a plan, that’s what she needs.

When Bobbi doesn’t say anything, Aimee answers her own question. “They want the building.”

Bobbi nods. That’s true enough.

“What are you going to do?” Aimee asks.

“I’ll figure it out,” Bobbi says.

“You sure? It doesn’t seem like these guys are anywhere near giving up.”

“Something you might not know about me,” Bobbi says. “I’m a trained scientist. Biologist. And if there’s one thing I learned in all my years in a lab, it’s that, when you’ve reached the point where you’re about to give up, where nothing makes sense and you’re sure you’re at a dead end? That’s the point where you’re right before the breakthrough.”

Aimee gives her a wry look. “Wow, things must be really bleak if you’re trying to cheer me up with refrigerator magnet platitudes. ‘The sky is always darkest before the dawn’? Real inspirational, Morse.”

“That’s not _exactly_ —” Bobbi begins, before thinking better of it. “Whatever. Just trust me, okay? I’m an Avenger.”

“Now that’s a good line,” Aimee allows.

The first thing she needs is a nap. Once back inside her apartment, she kicks her shoes off and collapses onto the couch, not even bothering to try for the bedroom. She falls into a dreamless sleep, and when she wakes up, the sun is high in the sky.

The tracksuits. The threat. Right.

Bobbi jumps up and gets into action. She takes a duffel bag out of the closet and her toothbrush out of the bathroom, brushing her teeth while she loads the bag with weapons. She’s still working out the exact details of the plan, but she’ll definitely need some heavy artillery to deal with the kind of numbers the tracksuit mob has on their side. In the back of her closet, behind her shoe rack, there’s a black safe with a keypad lock. She opens it up and takes a long look at its contents, eventually deciding on the sleep gas grenades.

There’s a Glock in there, too, under the hidden panel. She picks it up and looks at it for a long time, trying to decide. Avengers don’t use guns, as a general rule. If she breaks into their headquarters and shoots them with a gun, the cops won’t like that at all. The Avengers and all of her costumed friends will probably need to disavow her to avoid getting serious heat on their heads.

On the other hand, if she underestimates these guys, all it’ll do is piss them off and give them more of an incentive to follow through on their threats. _Little babies? Dead._ She can’t let that happen. There are always new superheroes coming up; it won’t take the Avengers two hours to find a replacement for her. No one will miss her.

Kate.

Bobbi rinses her mouth and puts on her shoes, and a few minutes later, she finds herself knocking at Aimee’s door. Aimee’s girlfriend (who’s name Bobbi can never remember, but she’s pretty sure it starts with an M) answers. “Babe, it’s your neighbor!” she calls into the apartment. Then she turns back to Bobbi. “Want to come in?”

“No, I’ll just be a second,” Bobbi responds.

Aimee’s face turns grave when she sees Bobbi. “Building stuff,” she says to...Marlee? Melanie? “Go on and start the movie, I’ll be right there.” When they’re alone, she turns to Bobbi and lowers her voice. “Do we have a plan?”

“I do,” Bobbi answers, “but I can’t tell you anything about it.”

Aimee looks disappointed.

“I do need your help, though,” Bobbi adds, and Aimee brightens up. “You’re still a bike messenger, right?”

—— 

It’s an hour and a half later, tops, when someone starts to bang angrily on Bobbi’s door. For a second, she thinks the tracksuits have changed their minds about the 24-hour deadline, but then she realizes they wouldn’t be knocking. She looks through the peephole and there’s Kate, giving her a death glare.

She opens the door, and Kate barges in, vibrating anger. Kate holds up a thumb drive, the one Bobbi sent over with Aimee. The drive contains over a decade’s worth of training videos on it, all of the recordings Bobbi made of herself in order to study and refine her technique.

Kate waves the thumb drive in her face. “What the hell is this, Morse?”

Bobbi ducks out of the way. “Um. Christmas present?”

“Uh-huh.” Kate's voice drips with skepticism. “Looks more like a goodbye present. Any particular reason I’m going to need training videos of you on a screen, as opposed to your real, live self?”

Bobbi tries not to react. She should have asked Aimee not to deliver the drive until tonight, that’s what she should have done. Then she wouldn’t be in this position. Kate’s not going to understand, she’s a real superhero, through and through. Not like Bobbi, who’s had any moral clarity she once had drummed out of her, first by S.H.I.E.L.D. themselves, then by her experience with the Phantom Rider, and finally, by being a fugitive and a scavenger on a foreign planet for three years.

“After today,” Bobbi says, “I probably won’t be able to train you anymore.” She gives her a brief rundown of her conversation with Samuel L. Trackson. “If I leave town, they won’t stop, and I won’t be able to protect my tenants. But if I send a strong enough message...”

“‘Strong enough message?’” Kate repeats. “Oh my God, Bobbi, what are you going to do?”

“Nothing that Wolverine hasn’t done more than once.”

“‘Nothing that—?’” Kate says incredulously. “You mean killing? Bobbi, I know these guys are no good, but let’s slow down a second. Most of them are just henchmen. They’re not the ones—wait,” she interrupts herself, letting go of whatever she was going to say, “but Wolverine has a healing factor. Is this a _suicide mission_?”

“ _No_ ,” Bobbi says firmly, before amending it to, “Probably not.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.”

“I’ve been in worse scrapes,” Bobbi says. “I won’t die in there.”

“Maybe not,” Kate allows, softening her voice a smidge, “but there’s no coming back from what you’re planning on doing.”

“Which is why...” Bobbi looks at the thumb drive in Kate’s hand and trails off. She doesn’t want to lose her; she really doesn’t. But it was always a matter of time, anyway. Bobbi’s too damaged to keep anyone in her life permanently.

Kate looks at her and shakes her head. “You know, she says, “I was so excited when I got that phone call from you telling me she wanted to work with me. Finally, a chance to get to know the enigmatic Mockingbird. To meet the hero behind the rumors.” She blinks quickly and bites her lip, as if to hold back tears, then tosses the thumb drive carelessly in Bobbi’s direction. “I wish that meant as much to you as it did to me.”

“Kate—” Bobbi starts, but Kate’s gone, the door closing behind her with a _click_. “Damn it.” She picks up the fallen thumb drive and looks it it for a few seconds, waiting for the lump in her throat to subside.

Kate watched this, she thinks. And whatever she saw inspired her to march all the way down here from Tribeca, keeping up her rage the entire way. On a hunch, Bobbi slides the drive into her computer and starts to play the first video.

On the screen, a fresh-faced, much younger Bobbi Morse stands in one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. gyms and fiddles with the camera. She takes a step back and starts to speak, introducing herself and marking the date—her very first day of training. Then she steps back and starts practicing some moves that she learned earlier that day. She’s not good at all—she has no gymnastics background and only took one ten-week-long self-defense course as an undergrad—but each time she falls, she gets up, gives the camera a thumbs-up, and starts the routine from the beginning. Bobbi watches the whole thing through, then thinks about the Mockingbird that Kate looked up to.

She’s got to fix this. Bobbi glances at the clock on the bookshelf—okay, she can make it to Kate’s apartment and back in time if she works out the new plan on the way. She opens her apartment door.

Kate’s standing there, her arms crossed, with a smug grin on her face. “I thought that might work,” she says.

—

**December 16**

Just after dusk, Bobbi walks out of her apartment building. The coast is clear—she called Ivan earlier and demanded a parley before hanging up, and she had Aimee spread the word to the other tenants that they should stay inside tonight. Whoever’s coming should be here soon.

Like clockwork, two different white vans turn onto the street from the two opposing corners, driving toward each other and her. They stop at the same time in front of the building, and tracksuits start to pile out like from a clown car. There must be twice as many guys as last time, and they’re carrying wooden bats again. They look like a goddamn baseball team with the bats and the identical uniforms. The Brooklyn Bro-dgers.

Ugh, that was awful. Thank God no one heard it.

Ivan gets out last, and he walks up to her, the rest of his guys closing in. Good; close range is her specialty.

“Heard you wanted to speak with me,” Ivan says.

“That’s right.” She pauses for a few moments to let him wait, hopefully throw off his confidence. “I wanted to let you know that I’m not going anywhere.”

Ivan snorts. “You serious, bro?”

“You’re going to stay away from the building, and you’re going to leave my tenants alone,” she continues calmly.

Ivan cocks his head in disbelief. “Why should I do that?”  
Bobbi smiles, showing her teeth. “Because that way I don’t kill you all.”

That sets him off. “Bitch!” he barks, then he aims a punch at her. She dodges it and watches as the rest of his men close in.

She pops her staves out of her sleeves and connects them, extending them into a single bo staff, angling it to sock Ivan in the jaw and knock him onto his ass in one move. With the staff extended and thanks to her nearly-superhuman speed, the tracksuits’ bats are completely ineffective as weapons, and the fight is almost over before it starts. Until Ivan still on the ground, pulls out a gun.

An arrow flies through the arm and pierces his shooting arm. He manages to hang onto the gun, which he starts shooting at the roof, where Kate’s standing. The arrow she’s in the middle of letting loose goes way off-target, embedding itself somewhere in the building’s structure, but she recovers quickly and gets the next arrow in his wrist. He lets out a horrific scream and drops the gun. Quickly, Bobbi somersaults over to him and grabs the gun, spinning the staff and knocking out henchman the whole time.

Kate picks off anyone who’s left standing, and the whole thing is over in a matter of minutes. Barely conscious whimpering messes of gangsters lying in the street. 

Bobbi puts away her staves, then unloads Ivan’s gun before tossing it at his feet. She drags him up by the collar. “Tell your bosses not to underestimate me again,” Bobbi barks at him. “Tell them, ‘You won’t win, no matter how many people you send. Count your losses and stay the hell away from this building.’”

—

**December 19**

Bobbi wakes up cramped and disoriented. It takes her a few seconds to realize that she’s in her own living room, as she remembers falling asleep on the couch while watching TV.

She glances over at the three-seater, where Tony’s still out. His leg is hanging over the side of the couch, and he’s clutching a throw pillow to his chest. He’s got the side of his face smushed into the seat of the couch, and there’s a tiny circle of drool next to his mouth.

Wordlessly, she gets up and starts to prepare a pot of coffee. As she walks through the living room, she notices how nice it looks with all the cleared space. Like it’s actually someone’s home.

After pouring the beans into the machine, she hears rustling sounds from the living room and then Tony’s voice saying, “Ugh, it feels like something died in my mouth.”

“Well, you know where the extra toothbrushes are,” Bobbi calls out. “Hey, how do you feel about bagels for breakfast?”

“That sounds absolutely perfect,” Tony says.

Once the coffee is ready, she pours him a mug and takes hers to go. At the end of the hall, she notices through the window that it’s snowing outside.

On her way down, she runs into Tito, who also remarks on the snow. “An actual white Christmas,” he says. “You think it’ll stick?”

“It would be nice,” Bobbi responds.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Can’t barbecue in the snow, though.”

They reach the bottom of the stairs. As Bobbi opens the door for the two of them, she has an idea. “You know what?” She turns to Tito. “I’m having a housewarming party in my apartment this evening.” It’s the perfect opportunity, with her newly unpacked apartment. They can celebrate having chased away the tracksuit mafia. “The whole building’s invited.”


End file.
